Bayit Yehudi Housing Minister Uri Ariel is holding treasury hostage with his budgetary demands, refusing to approve IDF transfer to new Negev bases unless excess settlement expenditure gets okay.
The Housing Ministry has prepared a nice going-away gift for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the eve of his trip to Washington – plans to build more than 48,000 new housing units in the West Bank, and another 15,000 or so in East Jerusalem.
The building beyond the Green Line has been incorporated into the ministry’s construction plans for other regions of the country – a total of around 279,000 new housing units. The list of communities and the number of housing units came to light during the course of discussions over the past few days between Housing Ministry and treasury officials, on the backdrop of the Housing Ministry’s demand for significant budgetary supplements.
Housing Minister Uri Ariel (Bayit Yehudi), who also serves as chairman of the Israel Land Authority, has refused thus far to present the agreement for the transfer of the Israel Defense Forces bases in the center of the country to the Negev to the Israel Land Council for final approval. In doing so, for all intents and purposes, he is holding the plan hostage to his budgetary demands. Sources in Ariel’s bureau believe that by the time the parties meet again, next Tuesday, the treasury would have folded.
What we are dealing with here, in fact, is a dispute on two levels. On the one hand, it’s an argument over money. Following the decision to bring forward the elections, the government has been operating in keeping with the 2014 budget; but Ariel is demanding sums that exceed the approved budget.
According to a February 16 letter from Housing Ministry Director General Shlomo Ben-Eliyahu to the Director General of the Prime Minister’s Office, Harel Locker, the demands total more than 360 million shekels. One of the demands calls for an additional 30 million shekels for protective measures for settlers living in the heart of East Jerusalem’s Arab neighborhoods.
Housing Ministry officials deny any link between the delay in approving the plan to move the IDF bases to the Negev and the ministry’s financial demands, claiming that the two issues are unrelated and apolitical professional disputes.
However, those in the know outside the government are convinced there is something more to the story – that at play is an effort on the part of Ariel and others from Bayit Yehudi to delay the evacuation of the IDF bases in the center of the country so as to encourage Israelis to buy homes in the West Bank. Housing Ministry officials reject these allegations, claiming that they support the plan to move the IDF bases, but are also concerned with the finances of the ILA and its independence.
This leads us to the second level – the political aspect, which comes to light in the plans formulated by the Housing Ministry. One-sixth of the housing units planned for the coming years are in the territories, with a large number of units slated for construction in isolated settlements such as Ma’ale Amos (6,000 housing units), Bat Ayin (6,000) and Nahliel (3,500), or even settlements that have yet to be established, like Gva’ot (1,060) – a clear indication of the government’s intentions vis-à-vis the settlement enterprise.
Construction plans for East Jerusalem also draw intense flak from around the world, including the United States. The Housing Ministry’s plans include the building of 15 thousand housing units in Jerusalem, beyond the Green Line. I spoke to a senior government official, apolitical, about the plan.
“The lesson I have learned,” he said, “is that the land of the state, its most precious asset, should not be entrusted to a sectoral party. A sectoral party cannot serve the interests of the country at large.”
@ yamit82:
How did you know amazing, running a small experimental herd of them on the place near San Sabinal. They taste like chicken. One two of three of them could supply the needs of Israel for chopped chicken liver for a year. Much fearsomer then Longhorns.
honeybee Said:
What’s a herbivore????
One of these???
@ Bear Klein:
Israel needs a huge territory to disperse her population. The hi-rise buildings in Israeli cities will become a death trap in a major earthquake, and Israel is located on two lines of tectonic activity. Jews must live in light, single-story houses.
Dispersing the population is also the best way to avoid or mitigate an Islamic nuclear strike. Pakistan, besieged by the Islamists, has an unknown number of nuclear bombs, probably more than fifty. Saudi Arabia likely hoards some of the Pakistani nukes in return for financing its nuclear program. Iran, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, and Morocco have or in the case of Libya )Had) the critical know-how in nuclear technologies, and North Korea stands ready to help them. There is absolute certainty that Islamic terrorists will lay their hands on nuclear weapons fairly soon. Crude nukes are not that apocalyptic: a primitive bomb detonated at the ground level in Tel Aviv would kill something like 10,000 Jews, a statistically insignificant number. Looking at Nagasaki, the long-term effects of nuclear bombing are also tolerable. So instead of panicking, Jews should disperse into a single-story society interconnected by the latest communication networks rather than Tel Aviv’s promenades and high rises. And that’s why we need the Promised Land in its entirety.
It’s great to live in peace. Jews long for peace as no other nation does. Unfortunately, amid a sea of Muslims, Israel will never live in peace. It is a heart-rending assertion, but true nonetheless.
And so the Torah instructs us to fight for safety.
@ yamit82:
Yamit:
I lived in Israel long enough to learn enough about authentic Jewish nationalism, so as to be able to be a supporter of the same. Neither the late Dr Israel Eldad nor the martyred Rav Meir Kahane would disagree with what I have done with the Jewish ideologies they firmly implanted in me.
But my wife and I had gone there for graduate studies and not with intentions of permanent residency. In any case, I was already 40 years old in 1974 when we left Jerusalem; and one thing I learned there was that I would have little or no means of making a living or raising a family under prevailing circumstances, had we chosen to remain.
I also learned that the whole of public life in Israel was controlled by liberal leftists whom we both thought to be intolerable. So we have done whatever we could do for the Jewish nation and Jewish state since that time more than 40 years ago. Both of us were totally disheartened by Israel’s retreat from the Sinai peninsula in the late 1970s under American pressure, and I would not have wanted to be present to witness the self-disgrace of the Jewish state and the Jewish nation. If my wife and I should ever have the time and substance for another extended trip to Israel, my sole interest would be the progress of judaization of Shomron and Yehuda upon which I am totally focused.
Perhaps you are a better man than me, in that you stayed in Israel after the destruction of the real Yamit. That would have filled me with furious bitterness that would have eaten me alive. Also, you have real beliefs with which to sustain you. My belief is in the Jewish nation itself, which I regard as my permanent extended family.
In any case, I have no apologies to offer, and anything other than what I have written above would be a lie. And I am too proud to lie.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
yamit82 Said:
If you eat herbivores does that count ?
ArnoldHarris Said:
The only Jewish nationalists I know are the ones who live in the Jewish national home and are it’s citizens. At best you could consider yourself a supporter of Jewish nationalism and nationalists. I don’t know any vegetarians who eat meat do you?
ArnoldHarris Said:
So precious. As I said ,” please remove me from all of you comments”. Backhanded complement are,” naught but faint praise”.
@ Bear Klein:
BK:
I was not responding directly to your comment; otherwise I would have used Israpundit’s direct response box the way I am using it now.
To be utterly frank with you, my concern about housing is Israel is focused on, and limited to, the question of getting as many Jews as physically, financially, and politically possible, settled as homogenously as possible throughout Shomron and Yehuda.
My graduate degree background was city and regional planning. I have no information whatsoever about the cost of housing in Israel, and my inclination is to stay out of debates about matters regarding issues about which I know little or nothing.
How’s that for total honesty?
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
@ ArnoldHarris:
Israel has no majority in the Galilee and are rapidly losing our thin majority in the Negev. Housing and diversifying the population away from the central coastal plain should be a national project.
It takes 12 years from proposal to finished product of mosy building in Israel and that’s bottleneck.
BB and the Likud have failed the nation by creating the bottleneck or not it’s elimination and should be punished by the electorate for their malfeasance. Building halts in Jerusalem for almost 3 years of BB’s government has contributed greatly to the situation of housing prices.
Building homes where there is no demand does not reduce excess demand but increased it. No other way to punish failed politicians in democracies than to throw the bums out.
@ honeybee:
Honeybee:
I do not classify my responding comments to Yamit, dealing with what may be life and death matters of the Jewish state and the Jewish nation, as “petty complaints”. I frequently disagree with certain of Yamit’s comments. That is my right and my obligation as a Jewish nationalist. That you have described my comments to Yamit as you did, plainly tells me that you do not respect me, irrespective of what you claim. In any case, I thought I was complimenting you by writing that, unlike Yamit, your comments show evidence of a sense of humor. In fairness to him, however, I freely admit I too have no sense of humor at all.
All things considered, I choose not to take part in converting a serious policy blogsite such as Israpundit, into commentary ping-pong matches. This is why I have visited Ted Belman’s Chit-Chat posts only once, a couple of weeks ago, and that I shall not likely revisit that ongoing conversation, because unlike many other commenters, I work carefully to keep by comments topically relevant. So both you and Yamit can have Chit-Chats without my interference.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
@ ArnoldHarris:
Mr. Harris ,next time you write one of you posts full of petty complaints to Yamit82, please do not include my name in your comments. I have always treated you with respect and I expect the same from you.
Arnold, if you commenting on my post you did not get my intent. I have no problem with the building announced or to be announced, I am for it!
I am talking about one the biggest issues in Israeli society HOUSING PRICES ARE TOO HIGH FOR PEOPLE ON AVERAGE OR MEDIUM WAGES!
This is an issue for all but wealthy Israelis. So I as believer in freedom and not a believer in big government think how the land and housing process is in Israel must be changed in order to solve the supply and demand issues in housing.
Plans for construction of 48,000 new housing units in Yesha and another 15,000 new housing units in the annexed parts of Jerusalem, if carried out, are far more important to the future of the Jewish state and the Jewish nation than any question of who constructs them, the government or private investors.
As a matter of fact, I have been reading some of the Jewish leftist and anti-Zionist online sites whose maps indicate intensive Jewish housing and other construction all around Shomron and Yehuda last year. Of course, they publish such information as an alarm signal. But people with my loyalties cheer every new Jewish home and every new Jewish settlement in all parts of Shomron and Yehuda. Which would certainly displease those traitors if they were sufficiently intelligent to figure it out.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
The scarcity of land in private hands prevents free market forces from balancing supply and demand for housing (especially in the center of the country).
The in-depth government involvement in housing almost ensures inefficiencies in the real estate market.
I know the problem but do not have plan how to fix it that would get through the political/bureaucratic maze.