In the Jerusalem hills, halfway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, the foundation stone has been laid for Modi’in, planned to become Israel’s third-largest city.
The city will stand just inside the old “Green Line” on the site where the Maccabees launched their rebellion against the Hasmonean Greeks, for which Chanukah is celebrated.
The ceremony took place Tuesday, the sixth day of Chanukah.
The city will be near a moshav, Me’or Modi’in, founded by Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach and his followers some 20 years ago.
The new city, situated between Ben-Gurion Airport and the pre-1967 border, is being built at the hub of the country’s major north-south and east-west road complex.
The cornerstone was laid by Housing Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, at a ceremony attended by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, a half-dozen Cabinet ministers, Israel’s two chief rabbis, a score of foreign ambassadors and many invited guests.
Ben-Eliezer noted that the city is being planned for a population of 250,000. Public tenders for some 4,000 of 65,000 planned housing units have recently been issued.
Modi’in is the first of three new towns to be built at the turn of the millennium that will parallel the coastal plain.
The planned towns are a crucial part of Ben-Eliezer’s answer to the growing housing demand in the country’s central region and could provide an alternative to the inexpensive housing in the territories.
Housing Ministry officials admit privately that they hope the intended low costs of Modi’in housing will attract many future residents away from the cheap housing that is offered in the West Bank by settler groups for political purposes.
A group of demonstrators, angered that the planned city would compete with West Bank settlements, tried to disrupt the stone-laying ceremony by shouting insults at the prime minister. One threw an empty bottle at the dais where officials were seated but missed Rabin, hitting a bodyguard instead.
Modi’in is said to be one of the world’s first new towns being built for the 21st century in terms of services, planning and quality of life.
Its entire infrastructure, for which the Housing Ministry plans to invest$205 million, will be underground, and an ultramodern city center is intended to contain all commercial, community and education services, including vocational colleges, art schools and a university. Housing and other building is to be financed by private contractors.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
