Mayor Teddy Kollek denied today that town-planning here was guided by political considerations, as charged by Arab governments. The only considerations, he told newsmen, were those of municipal needs and esthetics. He denied that his city was seeking to annex Bethlehem and Ramallah to create a metropolis of 900,000 persons, explaining that the eventual 500,000 population of Jerusalem and 400,000 population of the other two cities would remain separate entities.
Kollek said that since the Six-Day War, 3,100 acres–75 percent of it belonging to Arabs–had been requisitioned by Jerusalem, but that not a single Arab family had been expelled and not a single Arab house requisitioned. All the land involved, he said, had been unfit for farming and would sooner or later have been used for building. “We did not invade any Arab quarter,” he noted. “We have only taken land lying outside Jerusalem.” He stressed that the building in Jerusalem benefited Arabs as well as Jews and that 600 loans for the construction or renovation of Arab homes had been granted by his Administration last year. He added that 50,000 citizens of enemy Arab lands had visited Jerusalem last summer and worshiped freely. Regarding the West Bank, Kollek said that a cessation of building, there “would be a disaster.”
Reporting the stories that define our era. When history unfolds in real-time, the Jewish world turns to JTA. Your support ensures we can document the complexities of war and the resilience of Jewish communities with integrity.
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.
