City planning is one of the tools used by Government to distribute
a com¬munity's resources, and it is, therefore, a political
act wherever and when¬ever it is performed. Political planning
in a democratic society presuppos¬es that 1) resources will be
distributed on a relatively equitable basis, 2) the goals of the
plan will be clearly stated, and 3) the entire citizenry will
ben¬efit, either directly as part of a special group or
indirectly as a participant in the life of a vitalized city.
The term "political planning" is used pejoratively when these three
planning principles have been deliberately rejected, as they have
been in planning East Jerusalem.
Distributing Resources in East Jerusalem
1. Land Takeover
Land is the major resource of East Jerusalem and its distribution
is the pri¬mary concern of the governmental planning function.
Almost all of the land being distributed (estimates range from 85%
to 90% of the land of East Jerusalem) belongs to one group - the
Palestinians - and is being award¬ed through the tools of
planning to another group - the Israelis.
A map of East Jerusalem showing the location of each
government-¬prepared town planning schemes (TPS), will
delineate the boundaries of 10 large-size neighborhood plans and 13
small-size neighborhood plans. These are scattered over the land
area of East Jerusalem, separated by considerable swatches of land
where no planning exists. These uncon¬nected spots on the map
indicate which neighborhoods are for Israelis and which for
Palestinians. The large-size neighborhoods are for Jews, the small
for Palestinians.
All of the Jewish neighborhoods are new; that is, they were planned
on vacant land that was expropriated by the government after the
1967 war. Not one new Palestinian neighborhood has been planned in
East Jerusalem since then. All of the Palestinian neighborhoods
were in existence before the war, but their size has been reduced
by the spot zoning plans. For example, Issawiye was 10,000 dunums
[one dunum is about 4 acres] in size before the war; but only 666
dunums are included within the zoning plan. In other words, 9,300
dunums of land cannot be used by their Issawiyan owners.
None of the large swatches of unplanned land that separate one spot
neighborhood plan from another may be used by their owners. They
serve as a land reservoir for future Jewish neighborhoods. This has
been the case in the past and undoubtedly will also be the case in
the future. A few of the many examples: unplanned land owned by
residents of Beit Hanina-¬Shu'fat (4,400 dunums) was
expropriated in 1980 for the planning and con¬struction of the
new Jewish neighborhood of Pisgat Ze'ev; unplanned land owned by
residents of Urn Tuba and excluded from the boundaries of the plan
for that Palestinian neighborhood were expropriated for a new
Jewish neighborhood to be called Har Homa. It was approved this
year (1995). The municipality keeps unplanned Palestinian land
vacant until the time is ripe for expropriation. The law enables
the municipality to demolish any houses built on unzoned land and
the municipality is a consistent enforcer of the law, at least in
East Jerusalem if not in West Jerusalem.
By a system of spot zoning that reduces the size of existing
Palestinian neighborhoods, allocates land for new Jewish
neighborhoods, and leaves large quantities of interstitial land
unplanned and vacant, the land resources of East Jerusalem have
been completely redistributed. Staged spot zoning has made it
possible for the State to achieve control of 87% of the land of
East Jerusalem. In other words, during a period of only 28 years,
it has been possible to effect a near complete turnaround in the
mat¬ter of land control in East Jerusalem, from 1967 when the
Palestinians owned approximately 90% of the land of East Jerusalem
to 1995 when the Israeli government is in control of 87% of the
land. The Palestinians may now live on and develop only 13.5% of
the land in East Jerusalem.
2. How High a House?
Not only has the land itself been distributed for the benefit of
one group over another, but also the benefits to be accrued from
using the land have been distributed inequitably.
The Town Planning and Building Law that permits the designation of
a variety of housing zones, ranging from low- to high-density zones
(15%, 25% and 50% of the size of a building lot) is applied to
Palestinian neigh¬borhoods. By contrast, building lots in
Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem have enjoyed building rights
of as much as 200%.
Similarly, building heights in Arab neighborhoods are confined to
one or two stories, whereas building heights of as many as eight
stories have been approved in the Jewish neighborhoods of East
Jerusalem.
Two illustrations: The municipality approved a TPS for a section of
the Ras el-Amud neighborhood. It provides for Jewish housing in the
heart of the neighborhood, with building rights of 112% in
four-story buildings; the plan for Palestinian housing in Ras
el-Amud, on land that "kisses" the Jewish neighborhood, will
provide 50% building rights in two stories.
The new Levi neighborhood, planned on the lands of Jabal
al¬-Mukabber, was granted building rights of 185% in three- to
five-story buildings. On the adjacent Palestinian lands, which are
exactly alike topo¬graphically, 25% in one-story is
permitted.
Low-density housing zones in Palestinian neighborhoods of East
Jerusalem prevent landowners from enjoying the economic benefits of
using their land for the construction of housing for sale or
rental. High-density construction in the Jewish neighborhoods
reduces the cost of each housing unit and spreads the cost of
infrastructure development among several families. This benefit is
denied Palestinian landowners.
2. Greening the Land
Every parcel of land within the boundaries of a planned
neighborhood is color-coded to indicate permissible land use. Land
painted green on the planning map is designated for public open
space or for the preservation of unhindered views of the landscape
(shetah nof patuah). It may not be used for construction. The color
green predominates in most of the Palestinian neighborhood plans.
For example the TPS for Beit Hanina-¬Shu'fat assigns the color
green to 3,000 dunums, or one-quarter of the land area within the
spot-plan boundaries (known locally as the Blue Line.) The
Government has recently decided to rescind this land use
designation and to remove the land thus designated from the Blue
Line, thus leaving it unzoned. In light of the history of unplanned
Palestinian lands that have been expropriated for new Jewish
neighborhoods, the residents of Beit Hanina are justifiably fearful
of this change.
The liberal application of the color green might imply that the
planners, in the best tradition of their profession, wish either to
preserve existing planted areas and/ or "green" others. A look at
the history and processes used till now to "green" East Jerusalem
belies this implication.
None of the land designated for open space in Palestinian
neighborhood plans is in fact planted areas; on the ground they are
beige rather than green. Two large open spaces in East Jerusalem
that were actually "greened" have been or soon will be destroyed
and the land used to build new Jewish neighborhoods: Reches
Shu'fat, where a forest on more than 1,220 dunums was cut down and
the land used to build 2,000 apartments for ultra-Orthodox Jews;
Har Homa, where another forest will be cut down to provide space
for 7,500 apartments. Last May, Mayor Olmert announced his
intention to build a new prison and police headquarters on land
designated for open space in Beit Safafa, promising the people of
Beit Safafa that the land-use designation "open space" on the
remain¬ing land will be changed to housing so that they can
use their "land for construction and thus be more ready to swallow
the bitter pill of a prison in their neighborhood.
In fact, the color green is used on a spot-plan map not to "open"
space but rather to "close" space. The purpose of applying green
paint liberal¬ly to Palestinian neighborhood plans was
publicly admitted by Mayor Teddy Kollek in October 1991 during a
meeting of the Municipal Finance Committee where City Council
members were asked to approve an appropriation for planning a new
neighborhood on land designated for open space in Reches Shu'fat.
When asked to defend the loss of 1,262 dunums of public open space,
Mr. Kollek stated that the green paint was originally applied to
the map of Reches Shu'fat in order to prevent Palestinian
construction on the land until the time was ripe to build a new
neighborhood for Jews. (This statement is recorded in the protocol
of the meeting.)
A Dunum Here, a Dunum There
In the Arab lands of East Jerusalem no lot larger in size than one
dunum, even though zoned for housing, may be built on before a
reparcellation TPS, which divides the land into parcels no larger
than one dunum in size, is pre¬pared and approved. This is
true of parcels that are as little as four sq. meters larger than
one dunum. This ruling does not apply to Jewish-owned land.
A master plan for Beit Hanina-Shu'fat was approved in 1993. It
zones 850 dunums of land for residential use. The plan stipulates
that no housing may be built on this land until a detailed plan has
been prepared and approved. A detailed plan was duly submitted for
government approval by the municipality. The plan stipulates that
no housing may be built on this land until a third plan - a
reparcellation scheme - is duly submitted and approved. This
reduces the size of each parcel and concentrates the land thus
obtained in a single location to create new parcels for public
building construction. The second plan has not been approved as of
this writing (April 1995) and the reparcellation scheme cannot be
prepared by the landowners, many of whom no longer live in Israel.
The landowners of Beit Hanina have been waiting for 28 years to
obtain the right to use their land. The legal planning process
itself has been used to deny them that right.
Preparing Society to Accept Planning Goals
The goal of this planned redistribution of resources has been
stated rather clearly - to maintain the demographic balance between
Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem. The citizenry is not fully aware of
how this goal is to be accom¬plished. (I prefer to believe
that one of the reasons that the majority has agreed to buy this
political goal is because it has been shielded from know¬ing
what a disastrous effect it has on the Palestinian inhabitants of
Jerusalem.) In addition, the public might find it hard to give
emotional support to a goal couched in technical terminology. And
so the goal was reworked to include the concept of a united
Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the Jewish people, populated in
all its parts by a Jewish majority, with a weakened and isolated
Arab minority. This restatement of the goal goes beyond the concept
of main¬taining to the concept of changing the existing
demographic balance.
Public acceptance of this goal was "firmed-up" through a long-term
and consistent public relations campaign, using slogans,
advertising, public events that dramatize the desired point of
view, maintaining contact with organizations that have influential
constituencies all over the world.
Simultaneously, the municipal government developed techniques for
discouraging active opposition from those who are either harmed by
the plan or who do not share in its benefits.
As a case study, planning East Jerusalem is an excellent example of
skilled political work and should probably be studied by
professional planners in cities all over the world who want to
learn how to mobi¬lize the public and manipulate it in
sup¬port of city-wide goals.
Even when the political has been accepted by the majority, it is
helpful not to divulge or exe¬cute plans all at once. Secrecy
can be used to manipulate the majority into "blind¬ly" going
along with political planning. Take the story of land
expropriation. Expropriation of the land for each of the "spots"
that repre¬sents a new Jewish neighborhood is not done all at
once, but over the years. The first expropriation of land - for
five new Jewish neighborhoods - took place in 1968. Since then six
more "spots" were expropriated at l0-year intervals (in 1970 and
1980). In this decade another major expropriation took place in
1991, additional ones in 1993 and 1995, and plans are "in the
works" for four more. This staged process of land expropriation
prevents the public from grasping the full impact of these actions.
The public sees each expropriation as an isolated event that by
itself has minimal impact.
Simultaneously, and also in stages, the Palestinian neighborhoods
have been planned, one or two at a time, each neighborhood hoping
that if it behaves itself, it too will turn into a spot on the map
which will enable peo¬ple to use at least some of their land.
The process has been going on since 1975 and today, in 1995, seven
out of the 19 Palestinian neighborhoods still have no "spot zoning"
and none of their land can be used.
Beit Hanina is a case in point. In 1980, when the government was
about to expropriate 25% of Beit Hanina land for the purpose of
build¬ing the new Jewish neighborhood of Pisgat Ze'ev, the
neighborhood leaders were told about it in a special meeting called
by the municipali¬ty. They were promised that in return for
their acceptance of this pro¬posal, the municipality would
prepare a TPS for the remaining lands of Beit Hanina that would
enable landowners to build. The landowners accepted this tradeoff
quietly: they had been granted the right to use their land in 1966
by an approved Jordanian TPS which had been frozen by the Israeli
government in 1974, and they were anxious to regain the right to
use their land. It turned out to be a bad deal for, until this very
day, there isn't an approved TPS that grants landowners of Beit
Hanina the right to build on their own land. Pisgat Ze'ev, on the
other hand, is a going concern.
The people of Pisgat Ze'ev had to pay a price - albeit minimal -
for their role in political planning. The government had decided to
implement the plan for Pisgat Ze'ev as quickly as possible in order
to establish a beach¬head along the northeast boundary of East
Jerusalem, where none existed. Construction of housing units was
speeded up and thousands of new resi¬dents - who themselves
were uninformed consumers - came pouring into the neighborhood,
only to find that the infrastructure had not been built. They
pleaded with the municipality to stop issuing building licenses so
that the population could remain stable until at least the road
system was built. Their request was turned down for political
reasons, just as their homes had been built for political
reasons.
In order to keep the consensus on political goals from getting
frayed, it is advisable to keep the populace from seeing how the
city will look and function at the end of the planning process.
(The inhabitants of West Jerusalem claim that the tool of secrecy
is used there also, particularly in road planning, where only
isolated bits and pieces of major new roads are shown to the public
in stages. They have coined a phrase for this kind of political
planning: the sliced salami method.) Therefore, an over¬all
plan for the entire area of East Jerusalem does not exist. Neither
a planning map nor a written statement is available to tell the
curious inquirer how the sovereign planning authority intends to
develop East Jerusalem. No document outlines the relationship
between the various parts of the area, how they will be connected
and for what purposes, what functions will be included and how they
will relate to one another, what standards are to be used in
residential, industrial, and public ser¬vice development, what
existing problems will be solved and how. These standard city
planning questions have never been answered. Have they been asked?
Planning in isolated spots, as they become avail¬able, posits
that integration will come later, after political goals have been
achieved. But planning is an integrative function and that aspect
of the city planning is totally lacking in East Jerusalem.
Has the Political Planning Process Been Successful?
Just as there has been a complete turnaround in land control in
East Jerusalem since 1967, there has been a comparable demographic
turn¬around. The Jewish population in East Jerusalem has risen
from zero in 1967 to 160,000 today, and matches almost exactly the
number of Palestinians now living in East Jerusalem. Demographic
parity has been achieved for now, but with the construction of
several new Jewish neigh¬borhoods and the expansion of
existing ones, parity will be abandoned in favor of a revised
demographic ratio, with Jews the majority population group in East
Jerusalem.
However, even with all this expensive and frantic planning and
build¬ing activity in East Jerusalem, the proportion of
Palestinians in the popu¬lation of Jerusalem as a whole has
remained approximately the same as it was in 1967, when East
Jerusalem was conquered. They were then and are still today about
28% of the total population. It takes a lot of effort just to stand
still.
Further, political goals do not remain static. They change over
time and it behooves the government to investigate whether the
goals of 1970 are still relevant in 1995. The people of Israel
voted for peace in the 1992 elec¬tions when they established a
center-left government that ran on a peace platform. The peace
process, with all its setbacks and halts, is still going on. If the
government manages to continue through the proposed
inter¬mediate stage and reaches the final stage of a permanent
solution, Jerusalem will be its crowning glory or its
deathbed.
The planning function has a great deal to contribute to furthering
the political goal of peace in an undivided city where there is an
equitable division of resources and distribution of benefits. It is
still not too late to prepare new plans based on the political goal
of peace.