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| ==Greening project== | ==Greening project== | ||
| Thousands of ]s are being planted as part of a ] project which involves growing a forest around the city.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.greenprophet.com/2009/12/06/14196/rawabi-palestine-planned-city/|title=Planned city 'Rawabi' draws on Palestinian enterprise and Israeli experience|last=Media Line|date=6 December 2009|publisher=Green Prophet|accessdate=29 April 2010}}</ref> |
Thousands of ]s are being planted as part of a ] project which involves growing a forest around the city.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.greenprophet.com/2009/12/06/14196/rawabi-palestine-planned-city/|title=Planned city 'Rawabi' draws on Palestinian enterprise and Israeli experience|last=Media Line|date=6 December 2009|publisher=Green Prophet|accessdate=29 April 2010}}</ref> Saplings have also been donated by the ], as well as private individuals and other organizations.<ref name=GROW/> | ||
| |url=http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/Article.aspx?id=162091 | |||
| |title=JNF donation to 'PA city' Rawabi sparks uproar | |||
| |last=MINSBERG | |||
| |first=TALI | |||
| |date=2 December 2009 | |||
| |work=The Jerusalem Post | |||
| |accessdate=9 March 2010}}</ref> Saplings have also been donated by the ] and by local and international organisations, corporations and individuals.<ref name=GROW/> | |||
| ==Access roads== | ==Access roads== | ||
Revision as of 11:23, 25 February 2017
32°0′36″N 35°11′6″E / 32.01000°N 35.18500°E / 32.01000; 35.18500
Rawabi (Template:Lang-ar Template:Lang-he, meaning "The Hills") Palestine's first planned city and the largest construction project in the country's history.The city has been hailed as a "flagship Palestinian enterprise." Rawabi is located 9km north of Ramallah. The city has been built according to a masterplan that envisages 6,000 housing units, housing a population of between 25,000 and 40,000 people, spread across six neighborhoods. Construction began in January 2010. By 2014, 650 family apartments housing an estimated 3,000 people had been completed and sold, but could not be occupied due to a breakdown in negotiations over supplying the city with water. The delay was attributed to the Joint Water Committee. The apartments stood empty, with Rawabi remaining uninhabited. Then on March 1, 2015, its developer, Bashar al-Masri, announced that Israel would finally connect the city up to the Israeli-run water grid. Buyers started moving into apartments in August 2015.
Some Israelis refer to Rawabi as "The Palestinian Modi'in." The project has been criticized by Palestinian movements including the Palestinian National BDS Committee, who claim that the use of Israeli materials risks normalizing the occupation. Some Israeli settler groups have also criticized the project, asserting that the city could become a terrorist base.
Location
Rawabi is 9 kilometres (5.6 mi) northwest of Ramallah, 3.5 kilometres (2.2 mi) north of Birzeit, 20 kilometres (12 mi) to the north of Jerusalem, 40 km to the east of Tel Aviv, and 25 kilometres (16 mi) south of Nablus. Amman, the capital of Jordan, is 70 kilometres (43 mi) to the east. In addition, the Israeli settlement of Ateret is nearby. Masri envisages the later as becoming a suburb of Rawabi in the future. The construction site stretches over two ridges, 700 meters above sea level. On a clear day, it is possible to see the Mediterranean Sea, 40 kilometres (25 mi) to the west, and the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv from the site. Rawabi's municipal boundaries will encompass 6,300,000 square meters of land. Residential and commercial development is based on a population estimate of 40,000.
History
Bassar Masri launched the project at the 2008 Palestine Investment Conference in Bethlehem. Total investment has so far exceeded one billion dollars, one third of which has been provided by Massar International The project is also funded by Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment Company (owned by the Qatar Investment Authority).
The project seeks to ensure that its new homes are affordable for young professionals. This has proved a challenge since the West Bank lacks a traditional mortgage system. Rawabi has been helped by the Middle East Investment Initiative, an American non-governmental organisation backed by the US Overseas Private Investment Corporation. The MEII has established Affordable Mortgage & Loan, a new company that will administer a $500 billion mortgage fund. The company will provide loans to Palestinian families over a 25-year period that will cover 70% of a home’s purchase price.
Masri sees the development as an integral part of a nation-building project and a step towards the construction of a Palestinian state. He himself recalls that when he was a boy in Nablus, merely carrying a Palestinian flag on the streets was sufficient to get one shot by Israeli soldiers.
It has been estimated that the project will create 8,000 and 10,000 new jobs in the Palestinian construction sector.A further 3,000 to 5,000 new jobs in "knowledge economy" industries including information technology, pharmaceuticals and health care will also result from its development.
United States Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) has agreed to two grants to fund feasibility studies for the city. This was agreed at a meeting between Bashar Masri, the Managing Director of Bayti Real Estate Investment Company and chairman of Massar International, Leocadia I. Zak, Director of the United States Trade and Development Agency (USTDA), who met on 15 March 2010 in the presence of US Consul General Daniel Rubinstein. The first of these studies was in order to develop a master plan for Rawabi's ICT infrastructure and services, and was won by the American management consultancy company Decision/Analysis Partners LLC of Fairfax, Virginia. The second study was to examine the possibility of building a tertiary waste water treatment facility for Rawabi and surrounding communities.United States Senator John Kerry had previously visited the construction site on 28 February along with Rubenstein and David Harden, senior advisor to the American special envoy to the Middle East, George J. Mitchell.
In 2009 the Palestinian Authority undertook to provide $150 million to cover infrastructural costs for power, water, sewerage, schools and roads, but later failed to honor this promise. As a result, purchasers have had to pick up the tab, which has led to a rise of 10 to 12 percent in the cost of houses.
Construction stalled in 2014 due to a cash flow crisis when Masri was unable to collect $70 million from homeowners and mortgage banks for the first batch of 600 apartments, following a breakdown in negotiations with the Joint Water Committee, which had refused to connect the city to Israel's water supply.However, on March 1 2015 Masri, was able to announce that Israel would finally connect the city up to the Israeli-run water grid. Construction resumed, and buyers started moving into apartments in August 2015.
Master plan
The Palestinian National Authority did not need Israeli approval for construction since the land for Rawabi falls entirely within Area 'A', which is under full Palestinian control. The Rawabi master plan was developed by a multi-disciplinary team from AECOM led by Raphael Samach (now with SAMACH+SEO), in cooperation with local experts from Birzeit and An-Najah National universities. The design was subsequently approved by the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian Higher Planning Council.
Constructing the city has created jobs for 8-10,000 Palestinians, a third of them women, and their pay is 30% above the Palestinian minimum wage. The residential areas will surround a city centre that includes banks, shops, petrol stations, offices, eight schools, playgrounds, walking trails, two mosques, a Greek Orthodox church, a hospital, hotel, a seven-screen cinema and numerous other arts venues, in a central piazza lined with arcades and cafes. One third of the engineers and architects are women, a gender participation without precedent in the Arab world. The design envisages an elaborate recycling infrastructure: water towers are not included in buildings, neither are satellite dishes permitted. Water is to be recycled by a computerized system, and any excess will provide watering for the city's parks. The public transport system is to run on electricity, providing free transit to residents, with visitors only being required to pay. Though an industrial zone is planned, with paved roads already leading to the site, permission has yet to be received from the Israeli authorities. A soccer field, and Roman amphitheatre girded by honey-coloured columns, and setting 12,000, has been completed.
The first 700 units were offered for sale in June 2013, with prices ranging from $60,000 to $170,000, 90% of which were sold, according to the developer, within a month. Of the initial purchasers of homes in Rawabi by 2013, 7% were single professional women and 11% were Palestinian Christians. Lisa Goldman, director of the Israel-Palestine Initiative at New America, argues that the project draw attention from the ongoing issues of military occupation, and notes that the home-buyers are middle-class couples earning 20 times more than the average Palestinian income.
Greening project
Thousands of saplings are being planted as part of a greening project which involves growing a forest around the city. Saplings have also been donated by the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture, as well as private individuals and other organizations.
Access roads
Though he obtained Israeli assurances in 2007 that a permit would be granted for a large access road capable of allowing 100 trucks to access the designated construction site weekly, and to cope with the volume of cars expected to be used by its prospective 40,000 residents, it took several years for a permit to be granted, for a much smaller, scaled-back primary access road to transport in building materials. Only in January 2012 was a single access road for trucks approved by Israeli authorities, shortly before a visit by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. The access road for inhabitants still needs to be approved. It needs to pass through Area 'C' and cross Route 465, used mainly by inhabitants of nearby Israeli settlements Ateret and Halamish and Palestinian inhabitants of Birzeit. At the beginning of 2013 a new stretch of road linking 465 road with Ramalla was approved, intended for Palestinian traffic only. As of June 2015, Israel has yet to provide permits for widening the only road to Rawabi as well for other access roads to Nablus and Ramalla.
Land purchase and water supply
Over the course of two years, the developers bought private property from 2,000 Palestinian refugee families living in Canada, Iraq, Spain, Kuwait, Britain, Portugal and Italy. The first 600 apartments were sold out by 2013, and were due to be handed over to their Palestinian owners in the spring of 2014. The relocation of families was delayed because of failure to obtain Israeli permission to link the new development to a local main controlled by the Israeli water authority.
The 600,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank are serviced with 6 times the quantity of water allocated to the area's 2,7 million Palestinians. Construction of the town was repeatedly delayed by failures in water supply, and Masri has stated that he can spend up to 70% of his time coping with water and access problems. By late 2013, the project was running two years behind schedule. A resolution of the issue was promised by August 2014, but Israel had still not come through with the requested permit in February 2015. As a result, the financial viability of the development project came under threat. Permits from Israel to allow the construction of an access road into the city were also lacking as of that date. According to Dov Weissglass, Mr Masri's coordinator with Israeli authorities, approval for connection to a water main was expected by March 2013, but was delayed for political reasons, as a sanction imposed in response to the reconciliation between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, which led to the formation of a Palestinian Unity Government. An Israeli spokesman denied that politics were related to delay, and affirmed Israel's support for this private development. Weissglass has further stated that if, as a result of the failure of the Israeli authorities to supply a water connection, the project collapses, Masri intends to bring a suit for damages in the United States against the state of Israel.
The city has a state of the art water grid - eventually serviced also by a huge water reservoir roughly half a kilometre outside the city - which is linked to a 2.4-km pipe through areas A and B under Palestinian civil administration. Israel has still to provide permission for the final link to the Israeli water company Mekorot's plant in Umm Safa, 1.1 kilometres across Area C, which is under Israeli military administration. For some years Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon placed as a condition for connecting the city to the Mekorot company, that the Israeli-Palestinian Joint Water Committee be convened to issue permits, not only to Rawabi but also to Israeli settlements, a proposal opposed by the Palestinian Authority, which has refused to convene the Committee since 2010 to avoid supplying Palestinian legitimation of Israel's settlements in the West Bank. Such delays do not occur with Jewish settlement, since Mekorot connects any legal Jewish home in the West Bank to its water mains. Tony Blair, head of the Quartet on the Middle East, who, together with Barack Obama has raised the issue of Israel's failure to supply Rawabi with water connections, has sided with the Palestinians this issue, stating that they have reason to refuse to supply settlements with water in so far as settlements are a key plank in peace negotiations. Technically, all new water infrastructure in the West Bank requiring pipes larger than 5 cm requires the approval of the Joint Israeli-Palestinian Water Committee. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was also reported to favour connecting the city to the watergrid.
Political infighting, with wrangling over whether or not, it was necessary to convene a joint Palestinian-Israeli commission to authorize the final linkage to water, became a key sticking-point. Ya'alon relented in early 2015 and approved connecting the city up to Mekorot. The decision was confirmed by Major General Yoav Mordechai, coordinator of Israeli government activities in the Palestinian territories, but the link was further delayed when the Minister of National Infrastructure, Energy and Water, Silvan Shalom, then postponed the decision, insisting that due authorization was required from the Joint Israeli-Palestinian Water Committee. In the West Bank, the Defence Minister exercises authority over the pipeline, while the water minister is in charge of the water, and Mekerot would not supply the water unless the Minister for infrastructure authorizes the Water Authority to give the go-ahead. According to both Weissglass and Shlomo Eldar such prior joint committee approval has not been necessary in setting up water connections for Israeli settlements in these territories, though Shalom's Ministry insists that this is a provision set forth in the Oslo Accords. A Haaretz editorial described the refusal to link up the city to water as a form of punishment to achieve diplomatic ends. The deadlock was broken on 26 February when Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu overruled objections and gave the go ahead for linkage. Masri hailed the decision, commenting:"Now we have our universal right of our water without being pressured for any concessions." As of June 2016, 250 Palestinian families have taken up residence in Rawabi. Difficulties persist since the pipeline supplies only 300 cubic meters of water per diem, which is below the necessities of the residents and the demands for further construction.
The right to purchase
Asked whether Jews could purchase apartments in Rawabi, al-Masri home-buyers must get permission from the Palestinian authority, a procedure that can take up to six months. He has no complaint about this because it is designed, he added, to avoid the possibility that "bad Israelis" might buy properties and fly the Israeli flag at their windows. Many Israeli-Arabs have purchased apartments as an investment or for leisure purposes.
Controversies
Masri has been attacked by both sides for undertaking his development. Some Palestinians protest that his approach is "normalizing" Israel's occupation of the West Bank.
In 2010, Israeli settlers held demonstrations to protest the project, although they acknowledged that they could not prevent the city's construction. Some settlers said they would establish settlements nearby.
Masri has repudiated offers of building supplies from settlements, and ignored Israel suggestions as to how Rawabi should be modelled. He has gone on the record as stating
Settlers are evil people in general that continue to harass our people; they continue to live on our land illegally, and it’s recognized by almost the whole world as being illegal. We do not deal with illegal bodies or illegal issues.
He has made it a requirement that all contractors working on the project "sign an agreement refusing to use Israeli products originating from the settlements or work in the settlements themselves".
Some Palestinians criticize the development as one that creates the impression that they can enjoy economic prosperity while the Israeli occupation continues. Yousef Munayyer has stated that,"(t)he project creates this illusion that there is this happy space in Palestine that is independent of the military occupation which governs many aspects of Palestinian life." In reply, Masri argues that it is a symbol that defies the occupation, secures Palestinian territory from confiscation for settlements, opens up job opportunities under an otherwise brutal occupation, and blocks the brain drain of talented Palestinians. If, he adds, such a developmental project is, as some critics assert, making the occupation look good, then, "maybe we should live in tents, maybe we should all freeze to death." In designing the project, he didn't think that 'Israel and Palestine would kiss and be happy.'
References
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- ^ Avi Issacharoff 'Waterless, the first planned Palestinian city sits empty,' The Times of Israel 20 February 2015
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External links
| Cities administered by the State of Palestine | |
|---|---|
| West Bank | |
| Gaza Strip | |
| From 14 June 2007, the Gaza Strip has been under de facto Hamas governance. | |
