18 July 2011 No Comments Email This Post

Today, Charish is a small town in the southern Galilee. But if government plans succeed, it could soon be the first all-out charedi city in the region.

The National Planning and Building Council voted in recent days in favor of the master plan for Charish 1, which would include several residential charedi neighborhoods and a business center. Plans to expand to Charish 2 are already underway, and altogether, there would be 8,800 new housing units.

Yigal Shahar heads the committee behind the city plans. He says he’s come to terms with the government decision to create a charedi city in the area, even one that dramatically changes the character of a currently secular area.

“This city is planned for charedim,” Shahar said. “Other people can continue living in it, but they’ll have difficulty obtaining services such as education, since there won’t be enough secular residents to warrant building [secular] schools or kindergartens.

“My heart goes out to the residents, but things need to be taken in proportion,” he added. “I believe a large part of the people living here today, people who maintain a traditional or religious lifestyle, can continue living here.”

It isn’t only the secular residents of Charish fighting the plans for expansion. Members of nearby kibbutzim, moshavim and Arab towns are worried the government is building a city of 150,ooo people, and that it could hurt their own development.

Shahar says that simply isn’t true, and that Charish will become home to just 50,000 people. ”We have not and are not planning a city like that, nor has any such request been made to the municipal boundaries committee,” he said.

Relly Prengler, an environmental planner advising the Charish planning committee, added that Arab towns are not expected to suffer from the expansions. “We did an inspection of all the Arab towns in the area and all have surplus area for planning in the years to come,” she said.

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Sources: Ministry of the Interior and Haaretz.

Related posts:

1. City shelters locked in Beersheva
2. ‘Kosher’ pension plans an option for charedi workers
3. Treasury to raise city rabbis’ wages
4. Pesach in the Old City: No buses, cars
5. Festival in Old City to sell non-kosher food