Jerusalem’s Municipal Planning and Building Committee granted final approval on Sunday for 671 residential housing units in the city, most of them intended for the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood.
The units were approved two years after the housing project was first initiated, but then stalled due to tensions between Israel and the Obama administration.
Ramat Shlomo is one of the neighborhoods in the capital that was built after 1967, and is located in an area that is past the 1949 Armistice Line, also known as the “Green Line.”
In the Pisgat Ze’ev neighborhood, 68 housing units were also approved.
But there were also apartments and housing units approved in other neighborhoods as well, some of them in Arab sections, such as Beit Hanina, were 49 apartments were approved, and in Wadi Joz, where 14 units were approved. There were 24 units approved in Umm Lison, and 7 units approved in Jabel Mukabar, 4 units approved in Beit Safafa, 3 units approved in Sur Baher and 4 units approved in the neighborhood of A-Tur.
Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat said that “We passed eight difficult years of pressure from the Obama administration to freeze construction. The Jerusalem municipality often froze construction and withheld government approval … and marketing of apartments was often delayed due to American pressure,” he said.
“I hope that time is over and that now we will be able to take up where we left off, and continue to build and develop the city for the benefit of its residents, Jews and Arabs alike, and to strengthen sovereignty over a united Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and to provide solutions for young couples. It’s the right thing to do,” Barkat added.