The Knesset Committee for Planning and Building in Jerusalem officially approved the construction of 400 housing units in Ramat Shlomo in Jerusalem Monday, just one week after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu officially approved over 1,000 housing units in that neighborhood and in Har Homa that have been slated for construction since as far back as 2010.
The move is sure to draw international criticism, as similar moves have been met so far with threats and ire from the UN, EU, and US.
Ramat Shlomo, despite being described by some as a “Jewish settlement in east Jerusalem,” is in fact located in northern Jerusalem, between Ramot with 60,000 Jewish residents and the Har Hotzvim Industrial Park.
The area is one of many in Jerusalem which is bursting at the seams due to the deepening housing crisis, due in no small part to the “covert” building freeze on Jewish construction.
Indeed, this is not the first time that the government has approved pushing forward with building projects in Jerusalem over the past month – nor that leftist groups have overstated the “intensification” of building there.
In October, extreme left group Peace Now leaked to the international media that Jerusalem would finally build 2,610 new housing units in the Givat Hamatos region, despite tenders for the project having already been approved as far back as 2012.
Meanwhile, leftist organizations remain quiet on the green light given for rampant illegal construction in Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem where there are more than 40,000 illegal housing units, in an attempt to establish facts on the ground to divide Jerusalem and establish the groundwork for a Palestinian state.
And they are also on the front lines of the movement against the government for its alleged apathy toward the housing crisis, despite the fact that the construction freeze itself has checked the natural growth of a region in Judea and Samaria that is reportedly over 90% unpopulated.