Five minutes after I read a fresh online item about the Knesset passing the National Planning Committees Act (popularly known as the Vandal Act, based on a word play that defies resistance), I stepped out my front door and found an advertising flier, very glossy, hanging from the doorknob. The timing could not have been appropriate.
The note on my door advertised the grand opening of a luxury full-service apartment development for tourists in Baka, the neighborhood next to mine in Jerusalem. Real estate that could have been used for affordable housing for young families will instead generate high profits through rental to wealthy tourists. In the off-season, the building is likely to be mostly empty. The cost to the developers has already been figured into the rent; the social cost to the neighborhood will be paid by the neighbors.
The Vandal Act (Hebrew text of the bill as it left committee here) provides for establishment of one national and six district committees to approve housing plans under an accelerated process. Benjamin Netanyahu – the man with three homes – claims that the bill will get dread government bureaucracy out of the way and speed construction of new homes. But those bureaucratic barriers that Bibi so despises include the process of opening a plan to public discussion and objections on social and environmental grounds. A much more realistic analysis of the law by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Bimkom – Planners for Planning rights, and the Association for Distributive Justice, states that establishing the committees
will bypass planning procedures and will lead to flawed housing plans, which will not provide a minimal quality of life for the residents; this, while also severely harming the environment and infringing on the public’s right to voice opinions regarding housing plans.
Economist Yossi Zeira of Hebrew University commented last Friday in an interview in the Hebrew business paper Calcalist:
These bureaucratic shortcuts are likely to be destructive. Hasty building permits, harming existing communities or vital natural resources and places of beauty, with no attention to conservation, will do damage that we’ll regret for generations. The shortcuts won’t serve the public, only the developers. This is the embodiment of the capitalist-government complex.
On the coast, more beachfront will be closed to the public, and housing in Tel Aviv will become even more expensive. Combine this bill with the government’s intent to privatize national parks, and who knows what will happen to Israel’s green space and historical sites.
You can count on the committees to approve more projects converting Jerusalem neighborhoods into areas affordable only to tourists. Young Israelis will be able to move out of town, or out of the country, while the oligarchs get richer.
The note on the door and the vote in the Knesset have a combined message: Israel has been sold to the rich.