The Yesha Council of Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria is demanding that the government find a solution to the de facto settlement construction freeze, which has left thousands of government-approved housing units stuck at various stages of the planning process.
Under Israel's agreement with the U.S. administration, new construction in Judea and Samaria will be approved in four lots per year. However, only three such lots were approved in 2017 (in January, June and October).
Last week, Israel Hayom published an expose revealing that more than 3,000 planned homes in Judea and Samaria that had been cleared for pre-sale have still not been made available to potential buyers. The report revealed that in 2017, the Israel Lands Authority repeatedly postponed the publication of construction tenders. It now emerges that in addition to the homes held back from sale, nearly half the housing units greenlighted by the IDF Civil Administration's Planning Bureau in 2017 for review and final approval made no progress at all.
On Thursday, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman instructed the Civil Administration's Supreme Planning Council to convene this coming week to clear new housing units for sale and move new construction projects in Judea and Samaria ahead. A notice from Lieberman's office said this was in accordance with "the defense minister's policy of strengthening settlement in Judea and Samaria."
The Israeli Right expects the upcoming meeting of the Supreme Planning Council not only to clear new housing units for sale, but also to move plans for some 2,400 additional units ahead to the next stages of the planning process. If this number of new housing units is approved, they will join the growing pile of plans awaiting final approval. The plans are being stalled in the final stages of review and approval because of a severe shortage of personnel in the planning bureau, which has been subjected to cutbacks in recent years.
Settlement leaders voiced criticism of the government on Thursday for not having sufficient staff in place to expedite construction in Judea and Samaria after this was unfrozen following the eight years in which U.S. President Barack Obama was in office. The settlement officials expressed frustration that bureaucracy is holding up a government-sanctioned move that has encountered no American objection. It said one such example dates from January 2017, when the government approved building plans for 258 housing units in Beit Yatir in the southern Hebron Hills, 76 in Givat Ze'ev, 108 in Etz Efraim, 108 in Nofim, and 68 in the Samaria settlement of Barkan. None of these plans has been moved through the planning stages. Dozens of other plans were put up for review in June and stuck there, and others met the same fate in October.
After the Yesha Council was informed on Thursday of the reason for the planning bottleneck, it sent an urgent letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office, demanding that he ensure that additional planning staff are brought on board as soon as possible.
Hananel Dorani, the new chairman of the Yesha Council, wrote: "After the Israeli government, under your leadership, navigated the complicated political and international obstacles to the issue of building in Judea and Samaria, it would be a great shame if it could not improve – and quickly – the functioning of the system charged with responsibility for the progress of the planning and construction process."
The Civil Administration had no immediate comment on the report.
