Housing Ministry to offer public housing beyond Green Line

Housing Minister Yoav Galant is advancing public housing projects beyond the Green Line, saying the move is intended to strengthen Israel’s hold on the capital, the Israel Hayom daily reported Thursday.

The ministry has announced the procurement of 94 new apartments for the projects in various neighborhoods of the capital. These, for the first time, include homes in neighborhoods outside pre-1967 Israel — Armon Hanatziv, Ramot Alon, Pisgat Ze’ev, Neve Ya’akov and Har Homa.

Public housing projects offer homes to low-income families that are generally unable to afford regularly priced residences.

“Every apartment we buy is intended directly for those who need it most,” Galant said in a statement. The purchase of the homes, he said, “will both help more families and strengthen our hold on Israel’s capital.”

Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1980, but the move has not been recognized internationally. The Palestinians regard East Jerusalem as their future capital, and most countries refuse to recognize any part of the city as Israel’s capital, saying it is an issue that will need to be decided in negotiations with the Palestinians.

The East has, at any rate, remained largely segregated, with the Arab population living separately from Jewish neighborhoods which have been constructed in the intervening years.

Earlier this month lawmakers approved in its preliminary reading a bill that would require a special two-thirds support of the Knesset to relinquish any part of Jerusalem to the Palestinians under a future accord.

The bill was advanced by lawmakers of the nationalist Jewish Home party. Party leader Naftali Bennett has touted the bill as making the division of Jerusalem “impossible.”

In recent months the United Nations cultural body UNESCO has passed a series of resolutions that diminish or deny the Jewish connection to Jerusalem and refer to Israel as an occupying power.