Exploiting the last days of her term in office Israeli interior minister Ayelet Shaked recently asked Jerusalem’s local planning and building committee to expedite the construction of the Atarot neighborhood.
According to the Hebrew media the plan would see the construction of 9000 housing units for Jewish settlers in the area of Occupied Jerusalem’s old Qalandia Airport.
The plan is considered politically sensitive due to the former airport’s location in northern Jerusalem in an area which was occupied in the 1967 Six-Day War.
Shaked who promoted the plan during her term as interior minister wanted to complete it in the last week of her term in office before leaving the political life.
However she was informed by Jerusalem’s committee that the project’s environmental impact review have not been completed so final approval cannot be granted at this stage and the process will probably take another three months or more.
Sources close to Shaked stated that “since her Jewish Home party did not make it into the 25th Knesset she does not feel beholden to either outgoing prime minister Yair Lapid or prime minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu and would be unmoved if either them sought to force her to halt the project due to pressure from the Biden Administration.”
“Although it is not possible to complete the Atarot planning process at the moment Shaked has pushed the plan as far as she could during her term in office. Now it is up to the next government to complete it. This is about securing Israel’s hold on northern Jerusalem and actualizing a plan that will supply tens of thousands of apartments for the thriving real estate market in the city” according to the sources.
