JERUSALEM – After a faint afternoon in the mountains west of Jerusalem, the Israelis swam in a spring-fed pool and picnic in the shade of a fig tree in a Bucolic shelter called In Lavan, as they have for years.
But they will not have much time to enjoy.
Developers want to build 5,000 houses, a hotel and a business district by throwing a stone on the salt ridge.
This is no ordinary land-use battle between builders and protectionists. Proponents of her case have been working to make the actual transcript of this statement available online. Proponents of her case have been working to make the actual transcript of this statement available online.
And war can set an example for similar battles. Israel, the country with the highest fertility rate in the developed world, draws more than 200,000 people each year to the size of New Jersey, half of which is a barren desert. The resulting housing shortage is creating tremendous pressure to create less green space.
By replacing low-partitions with modern-day booms in Israeli cities – building houses, there is a preferred option of adding houses instead of stopping the urban trap. Builders make a profit by selling additional new apartments on the upper floors, using the air rights to subsidize new homes.
In the Jerusalem neighborhood, 86 percent of the 142,000 units Expected It will be approved by 2040 as an urban-renewal project.
But it doesn’t work everywhere.
Opponents say the renewal of Kiriat Menasheim comes at the expense of the location that is the treasure of Jerusalem.
On the southwestern edge of Jerusalem, Kiriat Menasheim is within the borders that complement the 1967 Middle East War, when Israel occupied the Arab East Jerusalem.
In May, the National Planning Agency expedited plans to renovate Kiriat Manasseh’s 28-acre Hanurit Complex, which currently has substandard low-rise buildings and is being converted into 1,700 new units. But the organizers could not include enough additional ments apartments for the developers to make a profit, officials say. And there is no option to add more units: the field is already too ga too.
Mostly stuck, the organizers set their sights on the virgin hills of Lavan Ridge. They struck a deal with the Israel Lands Authority to subsidize Hanurit’s renovation, allowing builders to buy publicly owned land on Lavan Ridge at an 80 percent discount.
The purchase will allow builders to build a new neighborhood of 1,000 homes at a profit. The new homes will be a sweetener for developers, not for Kiriat Manasseh residents, which is likely. They can afford it.
But developing an open country instead of air rights, will pay for urban renewal.
, Ortal Matzlia, 33, has lived almost all his life in his parents’ 580-square-foot apartment in the Hanurit complex. As a girl, she shared a bedroom with two siblings. He said families with five or six children only move into 3030 square feet of leaky, run-down apartments.
He said that under the planned renovation of its complex, the present owners will get an additional benefit of 270 square feet per apartment apartment. Elevators will rescue her who is now a four-flight walk-up.
“We’re talking not only about individual change, but also about social change: to bring a better population to the neighborhood,” Ms. Matzlia said. “They’ll only come if you have good buildings – not today’s ones.”
Ms. Matzlia said she was torn. He also loves hiking the Salt Ridge.
“We want to see that there will be greenery,” he said. “But, you know, we want to live like everyone else – a better life.”
Opponents call it a devastating blow: thousands of trees will be cut down. Wildlife is endangered. Construction can destroy mountain aquatic life feeding springs.
And Jerusalem’s 930,000 inhabitants will have little space to cool off and avoid the city’s concrete and mess.
“We are not like on shore; “We don’t have a beach,” said Delia Robbins-Morgastern, a 16-year-old who runs the WhatsApp TSAP group in protest of the project. She called Ain Lavan a “holy place.”
He said, “We do not have the Sea of Galilee. “We go here. You can go to Ain Lavan on Friday, and there are 200 people. That’s where I go with friends. I go here sometimes for peace and tranquility. ”
Ly Diley acknowledged that officials had promised that construction on the ridge would make natural lakes unpredictable. But they will escape from now on, he said.
“When you see people on their balconies, will anyone want to go into the spring?”
Instead of giving developers green space, some critics say, the government will subsidize the urban renovation of Kiriot Menashem.
“We will not accept the notion that the need for supplementary land justifies harmful schemes,” said Dr Boimel, planning head of the defense group Society for Protection NF Nature Israel. He said the plan was the latest in a series of recent expansions westward into the Virgin Mountains of Jerusalem.
He said the government had a better way of putting its hands in its pockets and giving cash subsidies to builders.
But Amit Pony-Kronish, head of the Jerusalem Urban Renewal Initiative, said there was no budget for such payments, especially given the current global economic crisis.
“If we have to choose between nature and these projects of old houses that are not safe for earthquakes again, rebuild, there are no safe rooms and if Lavan Ridge can help it, I am for Lavan Ridge,” he said. “I think this is the only jus chitya to hurt nature.”
Organizers have insisted they have worked hard to minimize environmental damage. They said they had shrunk the project, leaving the parkland near the springs and no hiking trail uncontrollable, and they would plant a tree to replace everyone they had overturned.
Deer living in the woods will also be given a special corridor of their own. As far as the aquatic life is concerned, if it is damaged, the authorities have vowed to install a pipe in the tap water so that the bathers can enjoy the pool of Ain Lavan.
Opponents have appealed the project to the National Planning and Building Council. His decision is expected soon.
But opponents have also split.
Chanan Sack, 18, has been one of the most vocal activists on the issue, updating 1,600 people on the WhatsApp group and persuading lawmakers and city officials. He said he feels for the residents of Kiryat Menasheim, where he was a little boy.
“We had seven siblings in that small house, and we had to share the living room with a bookcase,” he recalled. “Those people deserve a better position. But you don’t solve any social faults by making someone else. “
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