In chockablock Qalqilya, expanding city means painful compromise
With settlers up in arms and government set to decide crowded Palestinian city’s fate, residents say adding land and homes will mean giving up what little room for maneuvering they have left
QALQILYA, West Bank — A hefty brown bear lounges in the hot sun. A few feet away, three crocodiles live peacefully with a peep of chickens.
The Qalqilya zoo, according to the zookeeper and only veterinarian on site, Sami Khader, is the only place where residents of this mid-sized Palestinian city can go for entertainment. “It’s the soul of the city. Without it, no one would come here,” he said.
But zoo or no zoo, people are coming to Qalqilya.
A planned expansion and renovation of the zoo is a small portion of a larger scheme to expand the densely packed city of Qalqilya. It’s the West Bank’s most crowded Palestinian city, in which 53,000 residents live on just over 1.5 square miles (4 square kilometers) of land. By the year 2035, it’s expected to have 80,000 residents.
The plan allows Qalqilyans to build on their private property in the Israeli-controlled West Bank territory known as Area C. It was approved by Israel’s security cabinet last year and is heartily backed by the security establishment.
However, following an uproar by Israel’s settler leadership, the security cabinet decided on July 13 it would vote on whether to remove approval for the plan in 10 days.
The cabinet also decided to vote on the future of Palestinian building in Area C.
According to Rassem Khamaisi, a professor of urban planning at Haifa University who drew up the planned expansion for Qalqilya, around 100 Palestinian villages and towns are in various stages of planning for expansions.
While settlement opposition to the Qalqilya plan has made the news in Israel and influenced Jerusalem, it is not wholly backed by Qalqilyans either, who see it as a tough compromise.
In April, after the defense ministry and the Qalqilya municipality came to an agreement on the master plan, following general protocol, it was released to the public to allow objections.
“We received a lot of complaints from people who see themselves as being directly damaged by the plan,” said Qalqilya’s mayor Hashim al-Masri in an interview with Times of Israel in his office at city hall in June.
When Israel’s security barrier was built in 2002 to stem a Palestinian suicide bombing campaign that killed hundreds of Israelis, Qalqilyans were cut off from much of their farming land.
While agriculture is a key pillar of Qalqilya’s economy and culture, the plan to expand the city will come at the expense of what is left of the city’s accessible farm land.
Another popular point of contention against the plan, said Qalqilyan Mohammad Issa, 26, is a planned public road that will wrap around the city. The road runs through private property and landowners will not be compensated.
He also pointed out that landowners with plots smaller than 500 meters will not be able to build.
Issa said there are also those who “completely reject” the plan out of fear the road around the expansion of the city will act as a “fixed divider” between residents and the rest of their historical land.
A map given to TOI by the Israeli NGO Bimkom, a dovish group of architects and urban planners who specialize in planning rights, shows, in a dotted orange line, the large area designated as Qalqilya before the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. It stretches across the Green Line into the Israeli city of Kfar Saba.
In the north-eastern section of the map, one can see where the security barrier, designated by the bold red line juts into the West Bank in order to incorporate settlements, which are designated by the purple lines.
Alon Cohen Lipshitz, who heads Bimkom’s West Bank planning department estimated Qalqilya’s land before the creation of the State of Israel was around 27 square kilometers in total.
Qalqilya now has around 12 square kilometers beyond the Green Line, of which, according to the plan, between three to four square kilometers remain inaccessible for most.
Qalqilyans are also not allowed to build or farm for 50 meters along the sides of the security barrier.
Lipshitz called the plan a “kind of achievement.”
“But still,” he said, “it’s a huge compromise. From a normal point of view it’s very little.”
Masri said Qalqilya has been trying to negotiate with Israel about expanding since 2000.
The current plan is the result of negotiations over many years, during which the idea of expanding beyond the security barrier was rejected, and Israel’s security needs were taken into account.
“If the Israeli government wants to cancel the deal, there is no legal or even humanitarian justification for that, or from any other angle. They can only do it from a vantage point of strength,” he said.
Whether the objections of Qalqilyans will lead to revisions is unclear.
The architect of the plan, Khamaisi, said the opposition of some landowners was “legitimate.”
He argued, however, “We are creating a mechanism for justice. Those who are losing some should understand it’s being done for the needs of the public.”
Addressing the issue of reduced agricultural lands, Khamaisi defended his plan saying landowners are given the choice whether to build or not.
He also said the plan allocates land specifically for agriculture, which will end the practice of “overflowing” between farming and residential structures.
And while he believes Qalqilya should continue to fight for the right to work in its fields beyond the security barrier, Khamaisi assumes that residents of the city, “like the rest of the world,” will begin to work less in agriculture and branch out into other fields like commerce and manufacturing.
14,000 or 6,000 homes
Settler leaders have popularized the concept that the plan calls for 14,000 more housing units to be built in Qalqilya. Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman has rejected this assertion, saying the plan calls for around 6,000.
The plan does have what’s called a “nominal potential” of 14,000 units. But reaching such a potential is essentially impossible according to the building regulations of the plan. According to Khamaisi, the “nominal potential” of any urban plan has “never” been reached, nor is it meant to be.
In Tel Aviv, he said, a dense urban area, just 60% of the nominal potential is used.
The plan is meant to allow for around 6,000 more homes in Qalqilya by the year 2035. This is referred to as the “realistic” or “real” potential of the plan. This number is arrived at by taking into account the need for growth and the historical building rate for Palestinians in similar factors.
The nominal potential, Khamaisi explained, is used to help plan out the public infrastructure and give space for future planning after 2035.
A battle over future of Area C
The battle over the Qalqilya plan has brought to the forefront questions over Israel’s overall strategy regarding Area C.
On Wednesday, the security cabinet not only delayed voting on the plan, but decided that when it reconvenes in ten days, it will discuss comprehensive policy regarding Palestinian construction in Area C.
Khamaisi said there are at least four more Palestinian villages and cities, like Qalqilya, whose plans for expansion into Area C are finished but are currently frozen by the Civil Administration, the branch of the Defense Ministry that deals with Palestinian civilian affairs.
These are Tarqumiyah, a town in the southern West Bank near Hebron, Abdullah al-Younis, a village in northern West Bank, Twanie, a village in the southern West Bank, and the village of Al-Oqban near Bethlehem.
Khamaisi added that five towns and villages have already received full approval from the Civil Administration.
These are: The village of Tarqumiyah in the southern Hebron district, the village of Wadi Al-Nes, in the Bethlehem district, the village of Ras a-Tire, in the Qalqilya district, Izbit Tabib, in the Qalqilya district and the village of Ti’inik, located in the northern Jenin district.
These nine towns and villages are in the final stages of planning. But Khamaisi said there about one hundred villages and towns located in Area C or expanding into Area C already in various stages of authorization and planning.
The World Bank has urged Israel to allow Palestinians to build in Area C, saying it is vital to improving the donor-dependent Palestinian economy.
The United Nations and the European Union have also harshly criticized Israel for preventing Palestinian natural growth in Area C.
While the exact number of Palestinian residents in Area C in unknown and highly contested, experts have told the Times of Israel it ranges between 75,000 and 200,000.
According to EU Ambassador to Israel Lars Faaborg-Andersen , in 2014 only one building permit in Area was granted to Palestinians; in 2015, none were granted. And of 2,000 applications between 2009 to 2013, only 34 building permits were granted.
Khamaisi urged Israel and the Palestinians to accept the plan, arguing it would spur Qalqilya economic progress and allow Israel to beat back criticism of mistreating the Palestinians in terms of urban planning.
“I urge the government of Israel to be forward-thinking, to authorize the plan and advance it as an example to all Palestinian cities and villages in area C as an answer to the needs of the population. The population is not disappearing and continues to exist and develop and instead of living in distress, it can start thinking about economic progress,” he said.
Several powerful ministers in the current right-wing government are pushing for the annexation of Area C, although Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains formally committed to a diplomatic process that would eventually see the Palestinians take control of most of the territory.
