Plan for 9,000 Jewish homes in Jerusalem’s Atarot ready for discussion
Under Trump’s peace plan, Atarot was designated as part of a future Palestinian state and a Muslim tourist center had been envisioned for the site.
By TOVAH LAZAROFFGeneral view is seen of the area where Israel's Housing Ministry is discussing building new homes near Atarot, 2007(photo credit: GILI COHEN MAGEN/REUTERS)
A plan for 9,000 Jewish homes in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Atarot is ready for discussion, according to Aviv Tatarsky of the left-wing NGO Ir Amim.The plan, submitted in February, is for a project that would be located in an area of Jerusalem outside of the security barrier on the site of the disused airport.Under US President Donald Trump’s peace plan, that area was designated as part of a future Palestinian state and a Muslim tourist center had been envisioned for the site.The international community and the European Union had strongly objected to the plan.According to Tatarsky, whose organization monitors such projects in east Jerusalem, the plan had been held up for technical reasons but was now ready for discussion at Jerusalem’s local planning and building committee.KAN News reported on Sunday night that the plan would likely progress in the coming weeks before Trump’s departure from the White House and alluded to Trump administration acceptance of Israeli movement on the matter. According to KAN, the issue had been raised in a conversation between US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.US President-elect Joe Biden is expected to oppose the plan.Tatarsky said that such projects harm efforts to achieve a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on the pre-1967 lines.“The government is in a rush to advance huge settlements with the purpose of creating facts on the ground that will make it extremely difficult to realize a two state solution.“But no amount of unilateral steps will erase the reality of millions of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation which is stepping ever closer to apartheid. The prosperity and well-being of Israelis will not benefit from the Atarot settlement but depend on undoing what Israeli governments have been doing for more than five decades,” Tatarsky said.
