New city symbolises Palestine’s potential

[oberliner]

Rawabi: In the unlikely setting of the West Bank’s biblical landscape, amid stony hills and valleys where sheep and goats bleat under ancient olive trees, an urban planner’s dream is taking shape.

A gleaming hi-tech city, with homes for 40,000 residents, cinemas, shopping malls, schools, landscaped walkways, office blocks, a conference centre, restaurants and cafes, is rising on a crest within sight – on a clear day – of the Tel Aviv skyline.

It looks a little like a new Israeli settlement. But the billion-dollar city of Rawabi is the first planned urban centre to be built for Palestinians. And phase one of the development – 600 near-completed apartments – has just sold out, with around 8,000 potential buyers registered for homes yet to be constructed.

The level of interest reflects social and financial shifts in Palestinian society and symbolises the economic potential of a future state of Palestine. More than half of those who have signed contracts have taken out long-term mortgages and a high proportion are nuclear families in which the mother works outside the home. A small number are single women who plan to live alone, unusual in Palestinian society.

A third of the $1bn investment in Rawabi has come from the private Palestinian conglomerate Massar International, and the rest from Qatar.

http://thepeninsulaqatar.com/middle-east/248467-new-city-symbolises-palestine%E2%80%99s-potential.html

[shaayecanaan]

1. Israel still havent approved the road

The road to which the article refers is the access road, which is temporarily approved by the Israelis on an annual basis. Israel still havent approved the permanent road that will (hopefully) service the city, even though the project has been on foot since 2007.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324743704578442753900645188.html

[oberliner]

2. BDS opposes the city as well

Boycott committee: Palestinian “Rawabi” tycoon Bashar Masri “must end all normalization activities with Israel”

http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/boycott-committee-palestinian-rawabi-tycoon-bashar-masri-must-end-all

It's amazing that it has come together at all consider the disparate forces acting against its success.

[shaayecanaan]

3. US Jewish organisations were angry that the JNF donated trees to the project

http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/JNF-donation-to-PA-city-Rawabi-sparks-uproar

Jews worldwide were up in arms Monday over the Jewish National Fund's donation of trees to a housing project being administered by the Palestinian Authority. The city of Rawabi, the first planned Palestinian community, lies about 6 miles north of Ramallah and is expected to house 40,000 people and employ 10,000. The project will also mark the first planting of a major forest, 25,000 trees in total, by Palestinians in Samaria in 42 years. That 3,000 of those trees were donated in late November by the JNF, though, has many critics crying foul. The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has been one of the most vocal of these, arguing that the JNF is a time-honored symbol of Zionism and that for it to make donations to the PA is just not right. "We are deeply critical and indeed shocked by the decision of the JNF to donate thousands of trees, grown with money donated by Jews from around the world, to the PA," ZOA national president Morton A. Klein said on Monday. "Has it really come to this? That a venerable Zionist organization with only one purpose - the building-up of a sovereign Jewish national existence - takes money from Jews and then uses [the] funds to make a gift of trees to Israel's unreconstructed enemies?" Ma'aleh Adumim Mayor Benny Kashriel expressed similar frustration Monday, saying the JNF contribution showed that the "system has gone haywire."

Masri then said that he would uproot the trees:-

http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Rawabi-developer-says-he-will-uproot-JNF-donated-trees

Masri included a standard term in the contracts requiring that no settlement products or services could be used in the construction of the project. About half of the Knesset signed a bill in response by which Israel would boycott the Israeli companies that had agreed to do work at Rawabi.

In early January, 48 MKs signed a petition to boycott 20 companies who were contracted to perform work in Rawabi and had signed the contract agreeing not to use settlement products.

Among the politicians who signed the petition were over a dozen Kadima MKs, including faction chairwoman Dalia Itzik. The MKs said in the circulated document: "Israeli companies sold the soul of Zionism and national solidarity for a handful of dollars."

[oberliner]

4. No they weren't - it was the BDS movement that demanded the trees be uprooted

To wit:

On 8 February 2011, I published the summary of my research on Rawabi, and its acceptance of a large donation of pine trees from the Zionist charity the Jewish National Fund (JNF).

In my article I called on the developers of Rawabi – a project led by Bashar Masri, chairman of the board of the Bayti Real Estate Investment Company, jointly owned by Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment Company and Massar International – to replace the political-Zionist trees planted by the settler-colonial apartheid JNF on the site.

My call was heeded, and a response from Masri claimed that there was some confusion over the trees, explaining that pine trees near the city were actually in Area C, a zone under full Israeli control. He said that the JNF donation had come through the website, and that there had been a mistake. While he had previously refused to uproot the tree saplings, following the publication of my earlier article, he committed to in writing to replace the conifers with indigenous olive trees.

http://www.bdsmovement.net/2011/davis-rawabi-5931#sthash.VnEGHeFJ.dpuf

Weird how you use RW sources like JPost as if it is representative of anything other than the right wing. Exactly one organization is mentioned in that article, and its the ZOA, which is a far-right wing group. While the reality is that it was pressure from BDS and other similar groups that led to the trees being uprooted.

The donations from the JNF were referred to by the BDS leadership as "settler-Zionist trees".

Of course, Ali Abuminah and his friends in the BDS community have been against this entire concept from the very beginning.

Rawabi developer Masri helps deepen Israel’s grip on West Bank

http://electronicintifada.net/content/rawabi-developer-masri-helps-deepen-israels-grip-west-bank/9170

By the way, if you want to plant a tree in Rawabi, check out this link:

http://www.rawabi.ps/plant.php

[shaayecanaan]

5. No, the ZOA was upset that the JNF were giving trees to Arabs

I'm not sure why you keep persisting with these bald-faced denials of the simple truth. It does nothing for your credibility.

[oberliner]

6. No kidding

The ZOA is not "Jewish organizations" and the ZOA is not the reason the trees were uprooted. The BDS movement is. That "simple truth" is explained quite clearly in the article provided for you above.

US Jewish leaders (other than Mort Klein) have been supportive of Rawabi from the beginning.

For example:

Jewish leaders who have seen Rawabi seem to share Masri’s hope and have become a source of encouragement for the project. Rabbi Kenneth Chasen, of The Leo Beck Temple in Los Angeles, told The Media Line that,“a funding coalition doesn’t come together unless there is a great confidence that there are tens of thousands of Palestinians who will make the venture profitable -- Palestinians who long to live in such a community peacefully alongside an Israeli state just a few kilometers away.” Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, of New York’s Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, asserted that, “This is the best way to make peace: a peace of common economic and cultural interests, where people engage in construction, not destruction.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/17/rawabi-new-palestinian-city_n_2896208.html

Meanwhile, US Palestinian organizations such as the BDS movement, have been and continue to oppose the existence of the city.

It was the BDS movement that called for them to:

"replace the political-Zionist trees planted by the settler-colonial apartheid JNF on the site"

And they succeeded.

Maybe you should take a step back and think about why you have a hard time viewing things from outside of your particular lens.

[shira]

7. This city is a new settlement. Why is it being enthusiastically supported by those....

Last edited Mon Aug 12, 2013, 08:14 AM - Edit history (1)

...who normally oppose settlements?

Israel is doing way more than the PA or International donors to see that this Zionist project happens. BDS folks aren't happy, and the PA hasn't put anything into this project, so what gives?

[shaayecanaan]

8. So you consider Palestinians living in Palestine to be "settlers"? nt

[shira]

9. What they're doing is no different than Israeli settlement construction....

Those Zionists are behind both Israeli and Palestinian settlement construction. You'll note the PA isn't behind it and neither is BDS.

So you agree with Israel when they're working to build settlements for Arabs, but not so much Jews?

[shaayecanaan]

10. That is complete nonsense

Rawabi is within Area A, meaning that the PA has full control of the area in relation to both civil and security affairs. Accordingly, it was the Palestinian Authority, and not Israel, that gave permission for construction to proceed in the first place.

[shira]

13. Nonsense to those who are ignorant. Here's some fun facts for you....

But like a microcosm of the Palestinian state in the making, the building of Rawabi is a continual struggle. Its future growth depends on a precarious political environment and the cooperation of Israel. Because of Rawabi’s location, Mr. Masri says, he and his colleagues spend about 70 percent of their time on issues like water and obtaining permits. Promised funds from the Palestinian Authority never materialized, posing an additional challenge.

The project has also come under attack from the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee, which opposes any normal ties with Israel. The committee has accused Mr. Masri of promoting his private interests at the expense of Palestinian rights and of whitewashing the Israeli occupation.

The project has attracted almost no international financing despite the billions of dollars that donor nations have given to the Palestinian Authority.

Four years ago the Palestinian Authority agreed to pay for the building of schools, a police station and some other public amenities in Rawabi at a cost of $150 million. None of that money materialized; Bayti Real Estate had to foot those bills as well.

Mr. Masri said he was disappointed that the authority had not set Rawabi as a priority.

“Today we have the full support of our government, but now they are broke,” he added.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/11/world/middleeast/birth-of-a-palestinian-city-is-punctuated-by-struggles.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

I'm surprised you still support this venture. Your political allies who are against it. Even Delrem, below....

[shaayecanaan]

14. Your own link shows you to be ignorant...

“Today we have the full support of our government, but now they are broke,” he added.

Having no funds to contribute to the project because they are broke, is different to being opposed to the project.

As to why they are broke:-

File under: Reading the writing on the wall. As the United States withholds vital aid for the Palestinians, Israel handed over $78 million last week. The early transfer of tax revenues reflects Israeli fears of wider unrest as the crisis strains the Palestinian Authority's budget to the point of government shutdowns over unpaid wages.

The financial crisis is a potentially destabilizing shortfall in revenues that raises the stakes for Mahmoud Abbas ahead of his return to the U.N. Little has changed a month since unrest paralyzed the occupied territories and called into question the stability of the Western-backed regime. Despite the bailout, Israel's third this year, the occupation and donor chaos behind the crisis are not going away; the PA is still on the brink

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/25/why-the-palestinian-authority-is-broke.html

[delrem]

11. After long thought I've decided: fuck that BS.

Fuck the trillionaires from Qatar (sp.) and Saud, those disgusting vultures.

[shira]

12. Why R U against Qatar and the Saudis for financing this? n/t