Plans for Hundreds of East Jerusalem Apartments Get City Backing
Image by Getty Images
A Jerusalem planning committee approved the construction of hundreds of apartments in a Jewish neighborhood of eastern Jerusalem.
On Monday, the city’s District Planning and Building Committee backed the building of 500 apartments in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood. The plan is reported to be in response to Palestinian violence in Jerusalem in recent months.
The housing units are part of a plan supported by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that would see at least 1,000 new housing units in the Ramat Shlomo and Har Homa neighborhoods. The plan was publicized last week in the media.
For Ramat Shlomo, the number of apartments reported last week was 640, but the committee approved fewer. Last week’s announcement brought harsh criticism from the United States, as well as other countries and international bodies.
The planning committee meeting was organized overnight at the request of Netanyahu, according to the Times of Israel.
“It is unfortunate that after the unequivocal and unanimous position last week of the international community opposing construction in Jerusalem at this sensitive time, authorities chose to move forward,” State Department spokesman Edgar Vasquez told Israeli media outlets on Monday evening.
“We continue to engage at the highest level with the Israeli government to make our position absolutely clear – that we view settlement activity as illegitimate and that we unequivocally oppose unilateral steps that prejudge the future of Jerusalem.”
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
