Information about Nabi Samuel outline plan: In June the Civil Administration published a new outline plan for the village. The residents of the village urgently need an outline plan for infrastructure development, to enlarge their homes and to create an orderly allocation of land for private, public and commercial/agricultural uses. The absence of such a plan endangers the future of the village. But the proposed plan completely ignores the needs of the residents and focuses on the antiquity site. The Civil Administration proposes to establish a tourist area comprising a restaurant, a visitor center, gift shop, guard booth (why?), etc. Entry to the site will be from the side near the Har Shmuel settlement, instead of the current entrance near the village of Nebi Samwil. Residents of the village, together with Emek Shaveh, have submitted objections to the outline plan, for a number of reasons: 1. Discrimination – development of an antiquities site on thousands of dunums while villagers are prohibited from planting a single tree because they village is in a national park. 2. The antiquities site is located on the area of the old village of Nebi Samwil, whose mosque and cemetery still exist there. Moving the entrance to the other side, near the Har Shmuel settlement, will make it difficult for residents of the village to freely enter the site. 3. The heritage represented by the antiquities site is inseparable from the heritage of the village. The Civil Administration should strengthen the connection between the residents and the antiquities in their village rather than creating tourist outposts on the West Bank. We hope our arguments and those raised by residents and other organizations who submitted objections will be considered favorably. Nevertheless, we anticipate that only a long, sustained struggle can prevent implementation of the proposal. alt-arch.org/nabi-samuel-national-park.php
Posted on: Mon, 02 Sep 2013 13:56:37 +0000