The establishment of a neighborhood for about 150 families east of Tel Sheva is currently underway.

• Tel Sheva

  Photo: 

  Dudu Grinshpan - Archive

According to the law, in order to establish a new locality, it is necessary to make a government decision and orderly staff work, from a policy except for the establishment of new localities and to focus on the development, strengthening and expansion of existing localities. These rules also apply to the establishment of a new neighborhood on an area that is outside the jurisdiction of an existing locality and is not "closely linked" to it, meaning that there is a great distance between it and the locality which it is supposed to be its extension.

The Southern District Planning Director found an original way to bypass the law and promote the creation of a new huge neighborhood near Tel Sheva. The planning director has recently been promoting the construction of a new neighborhood in an eastern area of ​​the town known as Wadi Al Hammam, with the aim of absorbing "Road 6 evacuees" - about 150 families living in the Diaspora on a future route of South 6 that should continue from Shoket Junction to the Negev junction. This is an area of ​​2,800 dunams, which is planned to erect 3,600 housing units, and will in part carry out an "in-place" arrangement of illegal construction currently in the area. De-facto bleaching of part of the diaspora.

The area designated for the neighborhood is outside the blue line of the town, its jurisdiction, and is under the authority of Bnei Shimon Regional Council. In other words, according to neighborhood law, "new settlement" is considered, and a government decision is needed to promote it.

But planning officials have a patent: Instead of trying to persuade the ministers to establish a new Bedouin settlement, they came up with a simple idea: changing the jurisdictions of the councils so that the neighborhood is included in the Tel Sheva jurisdiction, and peace is on Israel.

In a letter sent by the Southwest District Planning and Building Committee's chairman, David Leffler, to the Secretary of the Interior, Mordechai Cohen last October, he explains the rationale.

"Approval of a plan that goes beyond the jurisdiction of a locality and is not adjacent to the area of ​​jurisdiction in which it is located at the time - consider approving the establishment of a new area of ​​jurisdiction where the land is located," Leffler wrote. "As a response to this, the District Commission has set a stipulation in the plan under consideration, which requires prior approval of the transfer of the jurisdiction of the Bnei Shimon Regional Council to the local area of ​​Tel Sheva."

In February, it was decided that a geographical committee in the Southern District would redistribute these boundaries. The Borders Commission is currently commencing its work.

The program has another difficulty. One of the claims made in the various planning documents is that Shir al-Hammam is Tel Sheva's "last reserve of land", and there is no choice but to establish the new neighborhood there.

Regavim examined the aerial photographs and plans for the area. "An examination of the plans in the Tel Sheva area indicates that on the open space between the Bir El Hamam neighborhood - there is an approved plan for the eastern neighborhood of Tel Sheva," the letter sent to the Geographical Committee in the Southern District this week stated. "This plan, which was approved only four years ago, includes 1,250 housing units that have not been built to date, so that the plan is ready and ready to absorb all the families for whom, so to speak, the plan has been submitted for Bir al-Hammam, and will still remain the natural habitat for which the neighborhood was planned Eastern. "

And not only that, according to them, it turns out that another neighborhood is planned, simpler and closer to the town: "It turned out that there is a third plan relating to" Complex 3 "in Tel Sheva, which includes 1,708 housing units and is in advanced stages of the statutory process. This program does not require border patches and is more available than the Bir El Hamam program. "

According to Regavis, the existence of plans for 3,000 planned and unused housing units raises difficult questions "about the examination of the border transfer issue, and of presenting the matter as" urgent "and" urgent, "leading to the conclusion that such boundaries should not be recommended" .

In conclusion, they write, that the neighborhood's construction in this way is "a solution that is not radically disproportionate and that alone raises a serious fear of deception by plan and its promoters and the involvement of hidden factors and considerations in promoting the plan."

According to them, "It is difficult to get rid of the feeling that the construction of the neighborhood far from Tel Sheva is intended to serve the narrow interest of those interested in fixing the illegal outposts within the proposed plan and to allow for widespread construction of the settlement in the future, while turning a blind eye to taking over state land."

The District Planning and Construction Committee said: "The District Committee is discussing the plans whose initiative is the Authority for the Settlement of Bedouin Settlement in the Negev, headed by Mr. Yair Maayan. This is also a series plan submitted by the Authority and which the Authority considered to be the right and proper solution and no other solution was found. The population is the subject of the program. "

The Bedouin authority said it was "expanding Tel Sheva east by 2,000 dunams to establish a new neighborhood designed to evacuate families that are now on Route 6. The road cannot be developed without evacuation of the families belonging to Tel Sheva. The entire neighborhood was designed as Tel Sheva's neighborhood and is connected to all The roads and infrastructure for Tel Sheva. This is not a new settlement and we did not intend to establish a new settlement. "