Residents of the Arab village near Jerusalem waited years for a new neighborhood to be built. Now they can’t afford to buy a home there — and fear that those who can will destroy the unique character of their community
The Jewish residents from the communities neighboring Abu Ghosh call the Friday traffic jams in the Arab village “hummus jams.” It’s a bit of a sad joke that underscores the fact that many Jewish Israelis only encounter their Arab neighbors in the confines of a restaurant. Abu Ghosh – a community located about 10 kilometers west of Jerusalem next to the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway – is indeed familiar to most Jewish Israelis thanks to the cluster of restaurants on its main road, Derech Hashalom. But the warm relations residents of Abu Ghosh enjoy with the Jewish community have created some complex challenges for the villagers.
Like the rest of Israel, the Arab community is experiencing a housing crisis, and Abu Ghosh exemplifies the gravity of the crisis. The village is homogenous in nature; most residents belong to a single family and tend to marry within the community. Like other Arabs in Israel, they have no real option of living outside their community because they won’t be welcome in Jewish communities.
Because the village is surrounded by Jewish communities or by Arab communities that are strikingly different in nature to Abu Ghosh, the residents have no housing alternatives in the area. Moreover, because of the close historical ties between the people of Abu Ghosh and the state of Israel, residents are received with hostility in other Arab communities – and are even treated as outcasts, say some Abu Ghosh council members. The village, located in the strategically important Jerusalem Corridor, sided with the Jews in the 1948 War of Independence.
“On Independence Day they wave Israeli flags in the village, it’s a unique population,” says Ariel Bariach, the director general of the Abu Ghosh local council. The 8,500 residents of the village include more than 60 Jewish families who are renting, and a number of Jewish families living in houses that they own. The main street is packed with businesses, mainly but not only restaurants that draw residents of the adjacent Jewish communities.
“We’re a bridge to peace, we always have been,” says local council head Salim Jaber. “We’re a symbol of good neighborly relations,” he says. “But we have very serious housing problems.”
After years of waiting, Abu Ghosh is finally about to get a new neighborhood. But it’s far from certain that the long awaited expansion will benefit village residents.
Jaber explains. “Most of the workers in the village are simple laborers, with many living on National Insurance Institute stipends or a disability allowance. The salary of the workers in Abu Ghosh isn’t high. An unmarried man who earns 7,000 shekels ($1,900) a month – how long will it take him until he can afford to buy a house? We’re a poor village, and we don’t have many residents with higher education.
“Now we’ve started to make education the highest priority. When our children have an education and get degrees, they’ll be able to take out loans and buy homes.”
In the meantime, the neighborhood may be particularly attractive for Jews who want to live in a scenic locale near Jerusalem that costs far less than other locations in the area.
The Arabs of East Jerusalem are also expressing an interest in purchasing property in the village, and longtime residents of Abu Ghosh are worried about that, due to political differences, which some fear could even spark violence.
It’s the residents of the village, who are desperately in need of housing solutions, who won’t be able to afford to live in the new neighborhood.
The westward expansion of Abu Ghosh is part of an overall master plan designed to solve the housing crisis in the village, which as opposed to the Jewish communities surrounding it – Ma’aleh Hahamisha, Kiryat Anavim, Kiryat Ya’arim-Telz Stone – has not expanded until now. In fact, the village has actually shrunk. According to the figures of the Abu Ghosh local council, since the establishment of the state large swaths of land that historically belonged to the village have been expropriated – causing the village to shrink from 7,340 dunams (about 1,800 acres) in 1948 to a mere 2,000 dunams today. Much of the expropriated land was used to expand the neighboring ultra-Orthodox community Telz Stone and for construction of Highway 1, the main artery between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
The master plan for the neighborhood was developed by the firm of architect Yuval Yasky for the Israel Land Authority. It was approved in 2012, and in 2016 the Housing Ministry began development work on the western hill, dubbed the “soccer neighborhood.” A soccer field and several buildings have already been built there.
Abu Ghosh is one of the first Arab villages to be expanded, notes Yasky. “The intention was to create residential units that are as varied as possible,” he says. “We’ve planned dense construction with very few private homes, using both terraced and row construction. Our guiding principal was that everyone will have a backyard on their land – because that was important to the residents so that families can get together. In addition, although the neighborhood is at the edge of Abu Ghosh, it’s adjacent to existing construction and existing residences.”
So much for the plan.
Over the years, the nature of the neighborhood has become quite different from the original vision. Some of the lots in the western neighborhood were sold in the context of Bnei Beitcha (Build Your Own Home) for the local residents, as the residents themselves wanted. But other projects are being built by entrepreneurs who won the tender and who are making clear efforts to isolate the neighborhood from Abu Ghosh in an effort to make it more appealing to outsiders – mainly from the Jewish community.
“There’s no question that the expansion has undergone a metamorphosis during the marketing process,” said a source who was involved in the original planning. “Hamitzpeh neighborhood is now being marketed as an urban neighborhood with references to [the Jewish community of] Neveh Ilan,” he says.
In fact, all the entrepreneurs who have begun to market projects in that neighborhood mention its proximity to Neveh Ilan. For example, a group of Jewish entrepreneurs from Jerusalem, the Manos Group, is marketing the neighborhood as Nofei Ilan, without any mention of the name Abu Ghosh. According to the description, the project includes 11 buildings of four to five stories “that overlook the green hills of Jerusalem, from the edge of the Ayalon Valley on the way to Jerusalem. The pastoral surroundings near one of the country’s main highways, the communal building style and the open spaces … and excellent system of urban services all make for an ideal residential environment … for a happy family life.”
Another developer, the Neot Tel Ram Group, which is building a complex of 42 residential units, does mention Abu Ghosh, but calls the neighborhood “Pisgot Ilan.”
The Abu Ghosh local council filed a petition against the Israel Land Authority and the Housing Ministry after part of the community’s expansion neighborhood was sold to entrepreneurs to develop projects for the general public, in a way that the council claims adversely affects residents. According to the petition, the council was not informed about the tenders, and learned about them by chance. This, they say, was a violation of the court’s decision in the wake of a similar petition filed by the council in 2017, which ordered the authorities to inform Abu Ghosh before publishing tenders for developing its land.
The petition was submitted to the Jerusalem District Court by attorney Oded Afik from the firm of Afik, Ettinger & Co., which serves as the legal adviser of the local council. After news of the petition became public, one of the two tenders failed, and the Israel Land Authority intends to reissue it.
“They shouldn’t market now,” says the council’s director general Bariach. “Let’s wait four or five years – first we’ll work to integrate those who joined the community and then we’ll integrate others. Abu Ghosh cannot have another 2,000 families here, we’re not built for that. We want them to market in limited quantities, in coordination with us, because every resident creates a deficit for the council. We’re not Jerusalem or Mevasseret Zion. We have a shortage of land – there isn’t even land for a playground inside the village. There’s only land in the new neighborhoods they’re building,” he explained.
“The neighborhoods that they’re now marketing are causing us serious harm, because the residents of Abu Ghosh won’t be able to buy apartments there,” says Jaber. “We asked the Housing Ministry to wait a few years, because the council is in financial straits, but the Housing Ministry and Finance Ministry are interested only in money. In a few years there will be a very serious housing shortage for the children of Abu Ghosh. This construction is for people with money.”
A source on the Abu Ghosh council said that if the expansion neighborhood becomes a Jewish neighborhood – the council will demand that the entrepreneurs build suitable infrastructure for the new residents, since the council itself will be unable to meet their needs. “We won’t build a school for 10 children. Let them go to the communities in the surrounding area. And if they want a mikveh [ritual bath], let them go to Telz Stone.”
Bariach believes that the lack of relevant services will actually deter many potential Jewish buyers, especially young families. “We have no way of providing preschools for Jews; young families will have to go to the [neighboring] Mateh Yehuda regional council for education. Therefore, I don’t believe that young families will come here. What do Jews look for when they buy a house? Education and playgrounds. And with all due respect to how attractive the price is, there’s no Jewish community here,” says Bariach.
He notes, however, that Jews who are older might find the neighborhood more appealing. “On the western hill, most of the buyers are people at a later stage in life,” he says, noting that an organization of retired police officers was looking into the neighborhood. “They said that they don’t need schools.” People at this stage of life already have grandchildren – they are coming here to relax, he adds.
However, it’s not the influx of Jewish buyers that worries the village residents most, but rather the prospect of Arab buyers from East Jerusalem moving to Abu Ghosh. Residents fear that this could lead to political unrest, violence, crime and also damage commerce in the village, which relies heavily on Jewish customers from neighboring communities. In the council’s court petition, they specifically raised this point, stating, “The combination of the uniqueness of the community and the shortage of housing and land in Arab society, and especially in East Jerusalem, has led to many Arabs seeing the village as a preferred and even desirable place to live.” The petition continues, “The close relations between residents of the [Abu Ghosh] community and the nearby Jewish communities and the Israeli authorities is not well regarded among the Arab population whose political outlook differs completely from that of our community.”
Bariach explains: “In East Jerusalem it’s an entirely different population. During Operation Guardian of the Walls [in Gaza in 2021] the residents of Abu Ghosh demonstrated in favor of the State of Israel, and the residents of East Jerusalem were on the other side of the barricade. The restaurant owners who make their living from Jews who come here don’t want these wars. This is an enclave that wants to be a part of the State of Israel,” he adds.
The marketing of the lots for independent construction in the free market prevents the local council from influencing the composition of the population. “In the past, two Jews who bought land here sold to people from East Jerusalem,” says Bariach. “There were also two lots that were sold via the Israel Land Authority a few months ago to people from the east part of the city, at crazy prices by the village’s standards. They were sold for 1.9 million shekels [$530,000] per lot, and people in the community complained to us that they participated in the tender and didn’t win – because they had no chance.
“The local residents have no possibility of buying at free market prices,” says Bariach. “The only way they can expand [into new neighborhoods] is through tenders of Bnei Beitcha for locals only – because then they organize together like brothers, buy a lot, and everyone builds his own floor.”
The Israel Land Authority responded: “The ILA and the Construction and Housing Ministry operate in accordance with the decision of the Israel Land Council in marketing land to local residents, which enables them to sell up to 75 percent to the locals in the community. For example, Tender 198/2022, which includes 59 residential units, was split into two parts: 14 units are being sold to the free market and the rest to locals. The second tender 200/2022 was sold in the framework of a discount project, Mechir Matara (Target Price), which determines clear rules for selling to the locals – and there were no winners, and it will probably be published again.”