Eminent Domain in the Middle East

Submitted by Tom Davis on August 20, 2005 - 12:17pm

Understanding the festering abscess known as the Middle East isn't easy. This helps a bit.

Settlements go down, settlements go upNew Settlement Puts Pressure on Jerusalem Palestinians

by Jon Elmer; New Standard; August 19, 2005

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=8550

Jabel Mukhaber, West Bank, Aug 16 - Situated on a hill overlooking the Old City of Jerusalem, the new Israeli housing development looks like it could be an upscale planned community in suburban North America: a billboard solicits buyers for "phase one" housing units; another shows the blueprint of the future community, complete with a daycare, a shopping center, a school, parks, a country club and, eventually, a hotel.

But Nof Zion, due to open in 2007, is not your average suburb. Built amid 10,000 Palestinian residents of the East Jerusalem village Jabel Mukhaber, the 395 new housing units of Nof Zion will comprise a Jewish settlement in the heart of the area that every internationally recognized peace plan considers the future capital of a Palestinian state.

Backed by discriminatory housing laws and demographic-manipulation policies that favor new Jewish residents over Palestinians with centuries of direct heritage there, Nof Zion's developers and future residents will be the beneficiaries of the Israeli push to lay permanent claim to as much of the West Bank as possible.

Unlike Palestinians, who have to prove that they primarily reside in Jerusalem in order to maintain the right to be there at all, a realtor selling Nof Zion units in the US said they are going mostly to Americans who do not yet live in Israel, including many who may never make Jerusalem their primary place of residence. Nof Zion's first 30 sales have been primarily to Americans, according to Yaakov Simkovitz, who works for Anglo-Saxon realty, the agency in charge of securing buyers for the housing units.

Nof Zion is advertised as a "private neighborhood" with "the 24-hour peace of mind of a closed-gated-community." In Simkovitz's words, "Many of our buyers appreciate the added security that is offered by the closed-gated community."

Read the article at: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=8550