Publishing date: 03/08/2010

On Monday July 12, 2010, the Arab Center for Alternative Planning (ACAP) and Adalah filed a legal objection to the Master Plan of Harish h/1 to the Harish Special Planning and Building Committee.  This plan is the first stage of implementing the vision to establish an ultra-orthodox Jewish city with a population of 150,000 citizens.  Adalah and ACAP requested that the plan not be approved and its implementation be cancelled.

The proposed plan to establish Harish is located in the Wadi Ara region inhabited mostly by an Arab population. The plan is essentially within the jurisdiction area of the local council of Katzir-Harish (about 3,000 dunums), and would also include land in the jurisdiction area of the Menashe Regional Council (about 628 dunams, with the majority belonging to the communities: Strait, Barkai and Umm al - Qutuf). The plan is part of a wider plan which would involve 21,000 dunams of land in which 150,000 ultra-orthodox Jews would reside.

The Arab townships that neighbor the planned area for Harish include Um al Qutuf, Dar Al Hanoon, Barta'a, Kofer Qara, Meeser, and Arara; these townships comprise about 41,638 citizens.  All the townships above have low socio-economic status. 
 
Urban planners Enaya Banna and Hanaa Hamdan, as well as advocate Soheir Bishara, emphasized in the objection that approval and implementation of the plan to establish a city of 150,000 citizens in the region would result in overusing the environmental resources in the designated region, and would severely damage the natural future development of the existing townships.

The plan at hand, as it appears in the documents and sketches, which includes the plan for the "Harish-General Plan," will prevent any future possibility to expand the jurisdiction areas for development of the surrounding Arab townships.  For example, the town of Um Al-Qutuf will be surrounded by Harish.  Thus, the jurisdiction boundaries according to the general plan will be within the existing boundaries of the towns of Kofer Qara, Meeser, Barta'a, and Arara. 

The objection states that "the plan is forced, built on factors that are not objective, and established without a professional examination of different characteristics and without actual examination of professional planning factors in the field.  The plan also violates the principles of equality, distributive justice, which were outlined by the Supreme Court."
 
The objection also stressed that the plan reflects discriminatory planning policies and practice against the Arab population in Wadi Ara, where planning authorities allow the establishment of an Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, while at the same time refuse to recognize and plan for Dar Al Hanoon, an unrecognized Arab village, which has existed in the Wadi Ara region under jurisdiction of Menashe Regional Council since before the establishment of the State of Israel. The residents of Dar Al Hanoon have worked for more than twenty years to obtain recognition of their community.  However, their efforts were denied by the State on the grounds that the planning situation in the area does not allow for housing construction in the Dar Al Hanoon area.
 
The objectors stressed that "discrimination is also reflected in the allocation of land to the ultra-orthodox Jews at the expense of the Arab population that already live in the region."