In the world of urban planning, plan boundaries are always marked with a blue line. This is the accepted symbol of the clear concept of the boundaries of our work. But even the blue line is only the limit of the plan, not of the entire planning vision.
Any architect, engineer or urban planner will say that good urban planning will strive to create continuity, continuity and connection between it and what is happening around it. Because cities and states are continuums. A plan is always a piece of a puzzle much broader than its blue line. Then came Judea and Samaria, and military and politicians drew a green line, not planners. And as in the well-known children's story, the blue line looked at the green line and asked, "Who are you?" "I," said the Green Line, "am from a different story."
Members of Knesset on Aliyah to Aviatar // Archive photo: Shmuel Buchris
And since then they don't talk anymore. The Green Line is a wall, a barrier, through which no strategic Israeli planning, no national plan for infrastructure, gas, energy, power plants, power lines, mass transit lines, hospitals or cemeteries pass. Everything in Israel is planned tiredly but stopped, stuck, interrupted and stopped at the Green Line. For 56 years we in the planning world have ignored, in political teaching, planning as we should.
In the midst of a severe and ongoing housing and infrastructure crisis, the region, located fifteen minutes from the heart of our high-demand areas, is leaving itself to conduct itself in planning without any connection to us, playing hide and seek like children in kindergarten: placing palms over their eyes and saying, "Here, they don't see me now."
And not only at the national planning level. This split also exists in the world of local licensing and planning. If you thought that planning in Israel is centralized, wait until you hear what is happening in Judea and Samaria. It is clear that the security-political issue is complex and difficult to let go, but why is Ashdod's city engineer entitled to determine building lines for a public lot in the city, and the city engineer of Ariel or Ma'ale Adumim has to receive the approval of the Supreme Planning Council of the State of Israel? It's a school building line, yes? Not an atomic reactor.
Another example: Suppose your friends in Lapid, Oranit or Alfei Menashe build a villa, and during construction slightly changed the configuration of the windows set out in the permit. They will have to apply for a new permit from the beginning, and if they just build a pergola, they will need a building permit, with all the procrastination that implies.
Because minor changes in the authority of an engineer do not exist in Judea and Samaria as they do in Israel, and regulations for elements exempt from permits also do not exist in Judea and Samaria as they do in Israel, these and many other regulations that exist in the law and can be easily adopted and will benefit everyone who lives there, city engineers and regional councils, and certainly the residents, all residents.
In Israel, the planning world is educated to change and change, and in Judea and Samaria it is frozen in time. The excuse is "waiting for a political settlement," but proper planning does not contradict peace, on the contrary. If there is ever peace between the peoples here, we will also be required to establish and deploy continuous infrastructures together. There were already politically controversial regions in history, we didn't invent it, and yet those who actually held them always took care of their development and prosperity. To this day, the State of Israel uses physical infrastructure, rail routes, ports and even institutional bureaucratic structures built there by the Turks and the British hundreds of years ago.
Even those who believe that these parts of the country do not belong to us must accept the fact that they have been with us for 56 years, and keeping them in an undeveloped and planned state harms both sides of the conflict. The decision to manage them in the meantime without strategic thinking prevents everyone from prosperity and success. But there is hope: a public tender was recently published for the position of Judea and Samaria district planner, which is almost equivalent to the position of director of Israel's planning administration. The one that can lead to the necessary change.
One piece of advice for a candidate for office: It's not a matter of right and left. There is nothing to wait for peace or for the Messiah. Moshiach has not yet come, nor is Moshiach planning. That's our job.
Inbar Weiss is Beit Shemesh's city engineer
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