`Building On It` [1]
Yedioth Ahronoth weekend supplement, Friday 16 August 2013
By Oded Shalom and Akiva Novick
The announcement of the construction of 1,187 residential new residential units across the Green Line threatened to explode the talks with the Palestinians, but in the Territories the cement mixers are working energetically and the apartments are being snatched up. Agreement? Evacuation? `Nonsense. Even leftists buy here`
The Americans are irritated? I`m irritated that I don`t have marble in my kitchen
Even when the Palestinians threatened to boycott the talks, this week and in the USA and Europe they condemned Israel, the bulldozers in the neighbourhoods that are being built across the Green Line continued to work. `We sold 34 lots to `build your own house` within a day and a half`, reports Reuben Gur-Aryeh, a real-estate entrepreneur from Revava. `What can you do, with the Jews they earn double,` explains the contractor Sharif Uthman from Wadi Nis. What will happen if there is as political agreement? `Nonsense. It`s like crying `wolf, wolf`. We can continue to live here.`
Karni Eldad and Shlomo Bashan are building their house in front of the Herod`s mountain, the Herodion. The truncated cone, that looks like the mouth of an extinct volcano, stands in all its glory a few hundred metres from the window of the house that is still a construction site. The new neighbourhood being built at an energetic pace in the settlement of Tekoa at the edge of the Judean Desert takes its name from the historical site: Shechunot Nof Herodion [Herodion-view]. Every house there has a balcony, and every balcony faces one of the most spectacular views you could ask for.
We came on the day when the prisoners were released in advance of renewed negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, and two days after the Ministry of Housing and Construction issued announced tenders for the construction of 1,187 new residential units across the Green Line. The Palestinians threatened to boycott to the talks because of the new construction and the Americans and the Europeans condemned it. But in Tekoa and the other settlements we visited we found no one under stress. No one here got excited about the condemnations. The world can continue to bark, as long as the heavy equipment keeps preparing the ground for new construction.
We visited four settlements in the Territories, and in them alone about a thousand housing units are currently being built. At the entrance to every settlement we saw, alongside a sign with Biblical verses, a large billboard with a computer-generated image of a new house with a lush garden. Last Tuesday we saw bulldozers and cement-mixers, and the hills of Judea and Samaria looked to us like one big construction site.
The construction of Eldad`s and Bashan`s house began about a month ago. Their contractor, Sharif Uthman, from Wadi Nis next to Efrat, estimates that if all goes according to plan, he will hand over the keys in another month. He is sitting in the shade of a shed improvised from planks and cardboard, drinking steaming coffee in a glass and giving orders to the workers around him. At the moment the workers are reinforcing the sides of the house`s security room, the `mamad` [acronym for merhav mugan: protected space].
As Eldad, a cheerful redhead, was showing us the frame of the house, we were concentrating on the stone-cutter Muhammad Yusuf (37), also from Wadi Nis, who earns 150 shekels a day. He sits on the ground and with a hammer and chisel skillfully cuts stones for the facade of the structure. `Workers earn 80 shekels for a day of work in our village, and 150 shekels here,` says the contractor Uthman. `Here it costs 700 thousand shekels to build a house, and in our village I build four or five houses for that amount. That`s the difference.`
It is a long street at the northern end of the settlement, and all of it is a construction site. Hundreds of Palestinian labourers are building the new neighbourhood, and each of them carries a numbered entry permit. Yusuf the stone-cutter is number 251, Samir the moulder, 259 and Uthman the contractor received number 274. More than 400 workers` identity cards are waiting in the guardhouse at the entrance. In return for their ID they receive a green magnetic card on which is a number and the warning: `The card is personal and not transferable.`
Don`t you have a problem working here, building houses for settlers?
Yusuf: `What can we do? After all, we have to eat. Where there`s work, we go. If they give us work at the [Palestinian] Authority we won`t come here.`
Uthman: `Walla, what can I tell you, we have no choice. If we don`t build, what will we live on? In the end a man needs to think about feeding his children. My oldest son, Nader, is getting married in a week. How can I buy food for the guests?`
And what do they say in the village?
Yusuf: `People have gotten used to it.`
Uthman: `Everybody works in construction in the settlements - here, in Efrat, everywhere - so who can say anything? There are also those who envy us, who would love to work in the settlements, because with the Jews they earn double and sometimes more.`
The end of the caravan era
Tekoa is a mixed secular and religious settlement that is outside the settlement blocs. Along with Nokdim, Kfar Eldad and Sde Bar, all of them east of Gush Etzion, it is one of the settlements that presumably will be considered for evacuation if a political settlement with the Palestinians is reached. Karni Eldad, who has been here for three years, the daughter of former MK Aryeh Eldad of the National Union, rejects the division into settlement blocs. `I have no idea what will happen to us and I don`t understand about settlement blocs. It is very easy for people sitting in cafes in Tel Aviv and politicians in offices to talk about settlement blocs, but how many is a settlement bloc? 750 families? A thousand families? If it`s a thousand, then we have nothing to worry about, we`re on the way there.`
According to data from Peace Now, 1,747 new housing units were started across the Green Line in 2012 and 36.4 % of the construction starts were done east of the route of the separation fence, most of them in settlements that are supposed to be evacuated in the event of a political accord. The momentum of construction in Tekoa can be credited to the opening of highway 398, which connects the settlements of eastern Gush Etzion to Jerusalem and has been dubbed the `Lieberman highway` after MK Avigdor Lieberman, who lives in Nokdim in the east of the Gush. In 2007 it was opened for traffic, and immediately the trip to Jerusalem was reduced from three quarters of an hour to only ten minutes. In the six years since then the settlement has grown threefold. In return for 350 thousand shekels, not including development fees and taxes, you get a half-dunam lot [1 dunam = 1,000 square metres]. For nearly a million shekels you get a 120 square metre apartment. And we`ve already mentioned the view.
`We came here for ideological reasons,and also for the view and the proximity to Jerusalem,` says Eldad. `For three years now we`ve been in a caravan [mobile home, or trailer]. We`ve had enough of that.`
Your building is irritating the Americans nervous and angering the Palestinians
`With all due respect, we`re living in 45 square metres. I have a husband and two children, and I`m fed up with living in a caravan. I really care that it irritates the Americans! I don`t have marble in my kitchen - that doesn`t irritate me? People get upset about what happens to them at home, not in the homes of others. In the end I just want a normal life. We`re building because we need a bigger house, not to walk over somebody else.`
Karni Eldad, 39, is a musician. Her husband Shlomo Bashan 34, is a construction contractor who builds on both sides of the Green Line. Bashan grew up in Neve Dekalim in Gush Katif [in the Gaza Strip], and was evacuated as part of the disengagement plan. We asked him if building a house in Tekoa is not another gamble for him after the previous evacuation. His wife jumped in to answer on his behalf. `My husband doesn`t need to answer that,` She said. `His heart has already been broken.`
Bashan: `They`re right. It is a kind of gamble. I was 25 then and very angry. I underwent a very hard trauma. I still live in the Gush. But I could build a house in Tel Aviv and fall victim to Sudanese burglars, or a construction crane could cause a tragedy in my family. Tragedies can happen everywhere. I won`t let that fact paralyze me, cause me not to live here.`
The renewed negotiations don`t concern you?
Eldad: `Nonsense. Not at all. It`s like crying `wolf, wolf`. It always starts again and we`re supposed to get scared. I`m not scared. Really, who am I bothering by building here?`
The Palestinians, for example
`Have you talked to the workers? Aren`t they happy? One of the workers can have a wedding for his son this year thanks to us. Sharif the contractor will earn four times as much as I do. And that`s OK, that`s life. There`s really no problem here. We can continue to live like this. They don`t feel like they`re under occupation.`
To build and to be built here [2]
At the settlement of Revava, in the centre of Samaria, we were greeted by a prominent billboard: `Revava Gardens: spacious apartments with yard, rich specifications, five rooms at a special price`. The location, a few minute`s drive from Route 5 that crosses Samaria from the Green Line to Tapuah junction, makes the settlement a gem of real estate.
Reuven Gur-Aryeh, formerly acting and deputy head of the Samaria Regional Council and today an entrepreneur and project marketer, tells us it has been a smashing success. `We came on the very day they started to prepare the ground for the new neighbourhood. The project is 54 apartments plus 34 lots for `build your own house`. Three weeks ago the lots were snatched up within a day and a half. They pounced on them.`
How much for a lot?
Three hundred and fifty thousand shekels for 400 square metres. A five-room apartment, 128 square metres, costs a million 300 thousand shekels. In Petah Tikva an apartment like that will cost at least 2 million. Today real estate in all the settlements on Route 5 in Samaria is selling like hotcakes. Everything`s being snatched up. Up to now we`ve been building on land acquired from residents of the nearby village, Kifl Haris, but now Revava has used up all its land. I can`t build more unless the Defence Minister approves it. I believe we can easily bring 500 families here. In fact the settlement has nearly doubled itself in the past year and a half. From 200 families to 350.`
Doesn`t it bother you that the project you`re marketing is upsetting the Palestinians?
`Can I put it crudely?`
However you want
`Bother me, my ass! If we lived the way the world wants, we wouldn`t have founded the State. The Arabs want us in the sea. As for me, I don`t know how to swim, so I prefer to build here as much as possible.`
And the negotiations don`t worry you?
`Fiction. It doesn`t worry me at all. Two weeks ago I started to market the apartments in the project, and praise God, I`ve already sold an eighth of them. And that`s a project on paper - we`ve just started to level the ground. The pace is fantastic. As I told you, there`s demand here. Revava is within the Ariel settlement bloc, and even Yossi Beilin says that Revava will remain inside [the future borders of Israel] in any agreement.`
Does it make a difference to the buyers if the settlement is within the settlement bloc or outside it?
`The people who buy in Revava are right-wingers, but of the type that are looking for community and quality of life above all. They`re not hard-core ideological settlers. The moment a settlement is taken out of a settlement bloc, those people stop buying, and then the mathematics are totally different.`
At this point he stands up and points toward the east. `Go buy an apartment in Tapuah like the ones we`re building here - you`ll pay 880 thousand shekels for it. And Tapuah is only a few minutes drive from here. The difference is that Tapuah isn`t within the Ariel bloc. Revava is, and that`s why they sell for 400 thousand shekels less there. Drive west another 10 minutes, to Shaarei Tikva, and you`ll pay 2 million shekels for exactly the same house.`
Is it hard to get a construction permit?
It depends on the time. Four or five years ago, when I was deputy head of the Council, there were 70-90 new construction permits a year. After the freeze ended, in 2010, there were 1,500 new permits. A year after that there were 1,200 new permits.
There have been reports that the release of the terrorists was instead of a construction freeze. Is that a wise choice in your view?
`If you put it that way, a freeze or releasing terrorists, then I prefer to release terrorists. They can always be liquidated later. But if there`s another freeze, then you might as well close the shop in Judea and Samaria. Construction is the oxygen of every settlement. If there`s no option to build here, then people will buy somewhere else. It`s not like a city where there`s a second-hand market. If the children can`t stay, then it`s just a matter of time until Judea and Samaria shuts down.`
We are joined at the construction site by Shmuel Silverberg, deputy general manager of Mishab, a company that is building some of the apartments in Revava. His company serves mainly the `national religious` public all over the country, and recently it began to work on large projects across the Green Line. Silverberg says that construction in Revava is ideological as well, `but in the end it`s a business. There`s demand here and a good market, and there`s no reason not to build here.`
Is there any fear that they might stop you tomorrow?
`If they tell me to stop the machines, I`ll stop them and get reimbursed for the money I`ve already spent. As far as we`re concerned, we`ve received a permit, we have the signature of the Defence Minister who decided to permit construction here, so the State has a commitment to us. But more importantly, we have a seal of approval from the banks that issue mortgages here. Clearly they wouldn`t give mortgages if they had a problem with the geography of the place.`
We asked if the workers are Palestinian. Gur-Aryeh replied negatively. `The settlement doesn`t permit Palestinians to enter. Our workers are Druze.`
When a Jew builds for a Jew
On the slope in the north of the Kedumim settlement a crane lowers a huge iron plate onto the frame of a terraced apartments project. The foreman, Yohai, is a resident of Yizhar. The operator of the telescopic loader, Yedidiya, also lives in Yizhar. Fifteen workers are employed at the site, all of them Jews who live in settlements in Samaria. `The quality of the construction is better,` says the foreman Yohai, `there`s no need for security guards, there`s no damage. We read in the passage on leprosy in Leviticus about leprosy in a house. Upon their arrival in the Land the Almighty indicated to the Children of Israel where there was idolatry, and we are commanded to destroy and rebuild. There is greater holiness in a house a Jew built for a Jew than in a house built by a Gentile.`
Itamar Zoldan, the director of the construction company Kedumim La`ad Ltd., takes care not to employ Arabs. He has Jewish workers, and a few Chinese. His brother, Ido Zoldan of blessed memory, who was murdered six years ago when he was shot from a car in the Palestinian village of Funduq, requested that the company stop hiring Arabs, and the family has respected his will. In the memorial page for him on the website we read that “even at the age of eight he refused to eat watermelon bought from Arabs, and all his life he was committed to buying from Jews and Jewish labour.”
Zoldan says that Jewish labour makes the construction 20-30% more expensive. “My daily expenses for a Jewish worker’s wages are 500-600 shekels, against 150 shekels for a Palestinian. We pay insurance, pensions, vacation, everything that’s required. We absorb this disparity ourselves. The buyer doesn’t pay one agora for it.”
The cement-mixer is operated by a young man in a black shirt emblazoned with a skull and the words “price tag.” Twenty-eight new residential units are being built before our eyes in the Kol Tzofaich neighbourhood. Twenty-eight other apartments built by Zoldan’s company are already occupied. He takes us to another neighbourhood he’s building in Kedumim, Maoz Ido, named after his brother. Fifty-eight well-finished stylish-looking houses.
Zoldan says that since he was a child there have been maps of various options for political settlements: one time they leave Kedumim inside, another time outside. “But I don’t recognize political plans, only my construction plans. Just let me build. Whenever I can, I build. I have no question marks, only exclamation marks. It’s very simple: this is our country and we’re building it.”
But you own a company. Don`t you fear that the investment you have made here will be called into question?
`I have no question marks about Kedumim. God be praised, the public believes in this place and buys here. If we had to stop construction every time they started to talk, there wouldn`t be nearly half a million Jews in Judea and Samaria. We`ve invested a lot of money in our project here. Stage B in in Kol Tzofaich hasn`t been sold yet. And also in Kol Tzoaich A there are still some apartments we haven`t sold yet. With the help of God we`ll sell everything we`re building.`
Nevertheless, there are concerns on the ground. The night before, the message `Tomorrow morning an eight-month freeze begins!` began to spread on WhatsApp. False alarms like that have become almost routine at construction sites.
Towards evening we went to Ariel and toured a vast construction site, full of concrete walls, boards and steel bars. They are also building on the adjacent hill as well as many other areas in the city. Ariel`s first mall is planned for the western entrance to the settlement. Lieb Goldstein, a project marketer in the city, claims that about 800 residential units are currently being built. Another 117 units were approved this week by the Ministry of Housing and Construction. About 20 thousand people live in Ariel, which according to the Israeli plan is supposed to remain in our hands in any political settlement. The Palestinians oppose it, but that doesn`t prevent entrepreneurs, private contractors and the State from building houses and apartment towers here. `The city is thirsty for apartments,` says Goldstein, there`s huge demand here.`
Has everything been sold?
`There are projects that were put on the market within a few days. In a project I`m marketing, University Hill [Giv`at HaUniversita], 87 out of 95 units in stage A were snatched up without advertising. Soon we`ll start to build stage B, where we have 127 units. Believe me, if it were possible to build more here they`d build and everything would be sold.`
Because of the price?
`And the quality of life. The air is excellent here. We`re a 25 minute drive from Tel Aviv at a moderate speed. And bear in mind that a four room apartment in Ariel costs about 950 thousand shekels. An apartment like that in Petah Tikva costs a million 400 thousand shekels.`
The Americans are counting on a peace accord within nine months
`Nonsense. Nobody here believes there will be an agreement. Nor does anyone here see Ariel as an area that`s controversial. Even leftists buy here.`
Goldstein connected us by telephone to Zehava and Yoram Hilzenrath from Petah Tikva, who have bought a house in a project he`s marketing. Ages 60 and 62, they are in early retirement, natives of Petah Tikva and refuse to tell us their political positions.
Why Ariel?
`When I took early retirement, I found temporary work in Ariel and fell in love with the city,` says Yoram. Fantastic air, great view, an orderly city and nice people. I brought my wife here and she fell in love too. We decided to leave Petah Tikva because it has become a hot scorching concrete block. We looked in Kfar Saba, Hod HaSharon, Tzur Yitzhak, and no place did it for us like Ariel. I don`t know if they`ll return it or not. In the meantime I want to enjoy a fantastic quality of life.
How much?
`Let`s just say that the price we paid for a private house in Ariel couldn`t buy an apartment in Kfar Ganim 3 in Petah Tikva. An apartment! We`re supposed to get the house in a year. Let`s assume they return Ariel after five years. Even then we win. We`ll have had four years to enjoy a private house and good air. What`s bad?`
Translator`s notes
1. As well as the literal meaning, `building on it` is a Hebrew expression that means `counting on it`, `relying/depending on it`.
2. A well-known Zionist slogan and part of the lyrics of a Zionist folksong: `We came to this Land to build and to be built`.
Translated from Hebrew by George Malent
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