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JERUSALEM (Ma'an) -- In direct violation of past rulings, an Israeli council approved on Wednesday controversial plans in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan pushed by the settler organization Elad.

The Israeli National Council for Planning and Building approved a plan for Elad's Kedem project despite over a decade of appeals against the move by Palestinian residents and Israeli rights organizations.

The Silwan-based Wadi Hilweh Information Center said in a statement that the settlement project was approved after an emergency session was held at the council’s headquarters on Tuesday.

The center said Silwan residents withdrew from the session after they were treated “in a racist way.”

Residents said they were repeatedly interrupted by members of the committee while explaining damages the settlement project would have on their private lands. The committee also failed to provide an Arabic translator for the session, according to the center.

Lawyer Sami Irsheid said the council rejected all appeals against the Kedem project and cancelled an order made by the Appeals Commission in the Supreme Planning Council which called off the project last summer.

Silwan residents, Israeli NGO’s Ir Amim and Emek Shaveh, as well as a group of Israeli academics had presented an appeal in 2014 before the project was overturned in June 2015.

Irsheid called the council’s decision “purely political,” as the council reconsidered the appeal only following political interventions.
Wednesday’s move was condemned jointly by the Wadi Hilweh Information Center and members of a Silwan neighborhood committee who fear the approval will set a precedent for approvals on all future settlement projects in Silwan.

The center and committee called upon UNESCO to immediately intervene as the project endangers a historical city, and summoned the international community to support residents of the neighborhood in preventing implementation of the plan.

Elad, the group responsible for the plan, is a private Israeli organization which promotes illegal settlement construction in occupied East Jerusalem in a bid to increase the city's Jewish presence.

The Kedem project is a part of long-running efforts by Elad and other settler organizations to push out Palestinians from occupied East Jerusalem, in line with policies championed by successive Israeli governments to “Judaize” Jerusalem.

The Kedem project is expected to cover some 9,000 square meters and include stores and offices for Elad as well as an archaeological visitors' center for the nearby City of David National Park, built on Palestinian land.

The land included in the Kedem project was confiscated by Israeli authorities following the occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967, and has served parking lot since. In 2003, Elad took over the land and began planning a settlement project.

The group has since excavated the land, reportedly demolishing an Islamic cemetery 1,200 years old, as well as Ottoman, Umayyad, Byzantine and Roman ruins.

It was reported that they only preserved ruins they believed to be part of Jerusalem's Second Temple, while disregarding ruins from other historical periods.

The US State Department has in the past criticized the group for disregarding the diverse religious history of sites it controls in East Jerusalem.
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by Saed Bannoura for IMEMC

The Israeli “Regional Planning and Construction Council” approved, on Wednesday, the so-called “Kedem – City of David” colonialist project that would be undertaken at the main entrances of the Wadi Hilweh Palestinian neighborhood, in Silwan town, south of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The Wadi Hilweh Information Center, in Silwan (Silwanic), said the approval came during a brief meeting held on Tuesday.

It added that Palestinians from Wadi Hilweh attended the session, but had to withdraw after being constantly interrupted whenever they testified about the devastating outcome of such a project occurring on their lands.

The residents also complained that they were denied the right to Arabic interpretation during the council meeting.

Lawyer Sami Ersheid said that the Regional Council denied, Tuesday, all appeals filed against the Kedem project, and canceled the 2014 decision of the “Appeals Committee” of the “Higher Planning Council,” to completely void the project.

Ersheid added that the decision of the Appeals Council was very brief, barely two pages, in which it voided the 140-page decision of the appeals committee, issued in June of 2014, and never provided any justification for the legal, planning and construction reasons that pushed it for approval in the first place.

“The hearing at the Regional Council meeting demanding discussing all appeals against the project in just four hours, this is not enough because each section of the project needs at least 15 minutes”, Ersheid said, “Such deliberations in the previous session lasted for two days, each day for eight hours.”

He added that Wadi Hilweh residents, Ir Amim and Emek Shaveh organizations, along with several Israeli academics, have all filed appeals against the 2014 decision of the Regional Committee approving the project in 2014, and that the entire colonialist project was voided by the Appeals Committee in 2015.

“The decision of the Regional Committee is merely political,” he stated, “it is not legal, it was pushed by pressures from the higher political leadership; the Regional Council was just talking about the touristic importance of this project, and completely ignoring the harm and suffering that would be inflicted on the Palestinians in Silwan. We will file appeals and demand voiding the Regional Council’s decision; we will demand approving the decision of the Appeals Committee.”

He also stated that Israel wants to build a six-story building on 12.000 square/meters, for the use of the Israeli archeology department, in addition to a conference hall, educations rooms, parking lots for tourists and settlements, commercial stores, and offices run by the Elad colonialist organization, largely funded by millionaires from the United States.

The Wadi Hilweh Information Center and Committee issues a joint statement denouncing the approval of the colonialist project, originally submitted by Elad, and said that this approval just goes to serve the illegitimate plans in replacing the indigenous Palestinians with colonialist settlers, and colonialist projects.

They said that the approval of this project, originally voided nine months ago, “came in a racist session, that was merely for show,” and denied the residents the right to present their case, or to present the devastating outcome of this colonialist project.

They added that its approval will be the gateway for the addition of many more colonialist projects on Palestinian lands in Silwan, and demanded the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to immediately intervene, especially since this project aims at destroying Arab and Palestinian heritage and archeology, and demanded the International Community to act in helping the residents to counter this illegal project.

The “Kedem” project aims at the illegal annexation of large areas of lands in Wadi Hilweh -- lands that, until Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1967 -- were used for agriculture, before Israel illegally confiscated them, demolished a room owned by the Abda family, and turned the grounds into a parking lot.

In 2003, the Elad colonialist organization managed to gain control over the lands, and started planning before actually digging in al-Magharba Square, in addition to destroying Ottoman, Byzantine and Roman sites, and left just a few of them as an “archeological proof of the second temple.”