The project, which was given early-stage approval by the Local Planning Committee in the Jerusalem municipality, will be located beyond the Green Line, nestled along the southwest side of the largely Palestinian neighborhood of Beit Safafa. But while Arab residents of the latter neighborhood have for decades pleaded with municipal leaders for additional housing, the new, distinctly separate neighborhood named Givat Shaked, with its several planned synagogues, appears to be designed for Jews.
Former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin also envisioned a Jewish neighborhood there and ordered authorities to expropriate 134 acres of the open land near Beit Safafa in April 1995 to set the process forward. But news of the plan sparked immediate international uproar as it was the first such expropriation in East Jerusalem in over a decade. It also came against the backdrop of the Oslo Accords, flying in the face of the momentum building for Israeli-Palestinian peace.
A resolution was introduced in the UN Security Council demanding that Israel put off the expropriation. The US, which also condemned the move by Rabin, nevertheless vetoed the resolution.
After initially standing his ground — albeit pledging that the controversial expropriation would be the government’s last — Rabin froze the plan days after the Security Council vote. In the 26-plus years since, no Jewish neighborhood was ever built on that land; nor were any other such expropriations carried out in East Jerusalem. READ MORE
