On Behalf of the Members of the Elected Local Council in Sandalah, Adalah Submits Objection to the Master Plan for the Village in the North of Israel
On 25 December 2007, Adalah submitted an objection to the Regional Planning and Building Committee – Northern District to Master Plan 14664/C for the Arab village of Sandalah on behalf of members of the local village council. The objection was written by Adalah’s Urban and Regional Planner, Hana Hamdan, and Adalah Attorney Suhad Bishara. The objectors argued, inter alia, that the plan, which was submitted in October 2007, ignores the wishes of residents of Sandalah regarding the village’s future development and the immediate environment in which they live, thereby disregarding their right to chose to continue to live in an agricultural-rural setting, and harming their quality of life. Adalah demanded the redrafting of the master plan in a way that will maintain the agricultural nature of the village, allow for its economic development, and reflect the vision of its inhabitants of the future of their community.
Sandalah is an agricultural-rural village located in the north of
The objectors seek the revision of the plan in a manner that will protect the rural nature of the village, enable suitable economic development for its inhabitants, facilitate the agricultural usage of the land without unreasonable restrictions, and respond to the wishes and needs of the village’s residents. The objectors also demanded that the revised planning process should be undertaken with the appropriate and genuine participation of village representatives. The objectors further demanded that the plan should earmark land for an employment zone in Sandalah to allow the transferal of all existing businesses away from residential neighborhoods, thereby enabling economic development without lowering the quality of life of the village’s residents.
Under Plan 14664/C, the total amount of open public land allocated for the residents of Sandalah, whose population is projected to reach 2,800 in the target year of the plan of 2022, is 18.35 dunams, or 6.5m2 per person. In comparison, the master plan for the neighboring Jewish community of Gan Ner (with a population currently numbering 2,699) allocated 56.5 m2 of open public land per person, a massive 8.7 times the amount of land allowed for each person living in Sandalah. In addition, the master plan for Sandalah allots a total of just 19.6 dunams for public and sports facilities, which is extremely small, particularly when compared with the equivalent allocation of land in Gan Ner, which is 166 dunams.
The objectors argued that these figures demonstrate “that the planning system operates as two systems – one planning system for Jewish communities, which works to enhance the quality of life of the residents, and another system for the Arab communities, which fails to provide a minimal amount of land for public services.”
In addition, the objectors argued, the scenario and directives of the proposed plan do not enable a living environment that is suited to the lifestyle of the residents of Sandalah and do not respond to their needs as a rural community. For example, the plan stipulates a building density of four housing units per dunam and maximal building height in some parts of the village of four stories plus a basement level, which in a rural community will result in overcrowding and a low quality of life.
Among the other features of the plan which render it inappropriate for the villagers are the many restrictions it contains, which unreasonably limit the agricultural use of lands earmarked for agriculture. For example, the plan stipulates that the construction of agricultural structures will require the approval of the Ministries of Agriculture and Environmental Protection. The plan further imposes as a condition for building an “agricultural shelter” that an “opinion from the Ministry of Agriculture on whether the desired use is compatible with agricultural activity, that the person seeking the permit is indeed a farmer and that the shelter is required for agricultural activity conducted on the plot of land” must be obtained.
As the objectors argued, these permits and opinions would require the landowners and farmers in the area to enter into long and exhausting bureaucratic processes, emphasizing that the issue of building agricultural or other structures is a matter of planning and building, and that there is no justification for conditioning such issues on approvals from the government. These conditions are therefore unreasonable and represent an obstacle that violates the basic constitutional right to freedom of occupation and harms the livelihoods of farmers living in Sandalah.
