DaysofPal- The Israeli human rights organization Ir Amim announced on Sunday that the Jerusalem District Planning and Building Committee has approved the deposit of a plan that would pave the way for the construction of approximately 450 settlement housing units in the heart of the Palestinian neighborhood of Umm Lison in occupied East Jerusalem.
The proposal was first submitted in 2022 by the company Topodia but remained frozen for more than two years after the planning committee required the expansion of the road leading to the project site before granting final approval.
The company was unable to meet that condition because it lacked the legal authority to submit plans involving the expansion of public roads outside its ownership.
In a statement released Sunday, Ir Amim said the obstacle was removed after the Israeli municipality in Jerusalem joined the project as a co-applicant. This allowed the road expansion to be incorporated into the overall development plan, clearing the final hurdle for the project’s advancement.
Umm Lison is located between the Palestinian towns of Jabal al-Mukaber and Sur Baher. The neighborhood currently contains around 800 housing units, most of them two- or three-story buildings. The new plan would add roughly 450 housing units in buildings reaching up to ten stories, fundamentally changing both the area’s urban landscape and its demographic composition.
Ir Amim said Topodia is controlled by a company registered in Australia. Its board includes Australian businessman Kevin Burmeister, right-wing activist Ehud Ragonis, and the former spokesperson for the settler organization Elad.
Burmeister and Ragonis have also promoted other settlement projects in Jerusalem, including the Nof Zion settlement built inside the Palestinian neighborhood of Jabal al-Mukaber.
The company claims it purchased the land from the heirs of Jewish owners who acquired it during the 1930s and cites those claims to justify the project.
An Unprecedented Expansion
Ir Amim described the proposal as unprecedented in scale. It noted that the largest existing settlement enclave inside a Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem is Ma’ale Hazeitim in Ras al-Amud, which contains about 120 housing units.
If completed, the Umm Lison project would include approximately 450 housing units capable of accommodating nearly 2,000 settlers in the center of an existing Palestinian neighborhood.
The human rights organization said the involvement of the Israeli municipality goes beyond a routine planning decision and reflects a clear political choice. Rather than avoiding a project likely to increase tensions and undermine the neighborhood’s stability, the municipality has chosen to play a direct role in advancing what the organization described as one of the largest and most consequential settlement projects in East Jerusalem in recent years.
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