Digital design of Rawabi. (Image: Bayti)
A Palestinian millionaire extended an offer for Israeli Jews to purchase homes and make use of a country club constructed by his company in a new West Bank city near Ramallah. Bashar al-Masri, the Palestinian entrepreneur spear-heading the project, was quoted in Ynet News welcoming settlers:
‘Israelis are invited to come and visit any time, and even though our target audience is Palestinian, if Israelis also want to buy apartments there, they’re welcome.’
Shaked settlement. (Photo: Milutin Labudovich/A Civilian Occupation)
Digital design of Rawabi. (Image: Bayti)
The village, Rawabi, has the aesthetics of Disney’s corporate-owned Celebration, or The Truman show; an American style suburb with the hilltop-grabbing spiral city planning of an Israeli settlement, jointly owned by a private company and the Palestinian Authority. Al-Masri plans to also recreate the synthetic culture of new urbanism in the occupied Palestinian Territories, in constructing the first new city in the West Bank since 1967, with up to 40,000 housing units:
‘We’re not only building homes there, but also public parks, shopping malls, and a country club….We wish to change Palestinian mentality where life is confined to the home…we wish to return to the warm neighborhood feeling I remember from my childhood in Jenin, where everyone knew everyone, but to do so in a modern fashion.’
As a companion to the Western life-style, al-Masri is also hopeful that Palestinians will take mortgages from Israeli-owned banks in order to finance home purchases:
‘I would be happy to see them taking out a mortgage in an Israeli bank, but even I cannot open a bank account there.’
Recently, the Palestinian millionaire was also awarded a permit to build a contested access road to the new city, facilitating one key step towards eventual habitation. The estimated move-in date for Palestinians residents– and Israeli settlers– is 2013.
And if 40,000 Israeli wannabe home owners see prices below those they might expect to pay in settlements (let alone Israel ‘proper’), what then happens to ‘Rawabi’? They’ll offer a few shekels more, buy ’em all up and build a wall around it!
someone has to have the nerve to go first and imagine that Israelis and Palestinians can live side by side in the same community; this is the only way the single state, with community and citizenship for all Israelis and Palestinians, will happen. Certainly there will have to be care taken, but this is the way to integrate the I/P.
The Israeli government should pay for all of this, as reparations for 1948-present.
Pure greed. That is all it is. After decades of suffering he’s encouraging more for a buck.