This week (right after Tisha B’Av, which fell on 13/8/24), the Elad foundation inaugurated the opening of a 730-meter-long zip line to the public in Jerusalem. The zip line is located along the Armon Hanatziv Promenade, stretching through the Peace Forest between Beit Shatz, which borders the Jabel Mukaber neighborhood, and the Elad foundation’s complex in the Peace Forest, adjacent to the Abu Tor neighborhood.
The opportunity to establish a tourism project with a view of the Old City of Jerusalem in one of the city’s highest and most accessible locations holds significant economic value. It is expected that this initiative will generate millions of shekels for the Elad Foundation. Many entrepreneurs would likely have been willing to invest considerable sums to obtain the rights to operate the zip line. However, Elad received this without a public tender, and the state even invested 43 million shekels in the visitor center that Elad established near the zip line.
The Peace Forest
Throughout the process, numerous governmental and municipal efforts were made to legitimize the project:
- 1. The two areas used as the starting and ending stations for the zip line were granted to the Elad organization by the Israel Land Authority without a public tender. These areas include land in Jabel Mukaber, in the Hai Al-Farouk neighborhood near Beit Shatz, close to the Armon Hanatziv, and land in the heart of the Peace Forest.
- 2. The Jerusalem Municipality approved the construction of the zip line through a building permit process without any public notice or discussion, treating it as a public, rather than a commercial, project. It was later revealed that the permit might be problematic since the area is considered a designated forest under the National Outline Plan for Forests (TAMA 22), and the Jewish National Fund (JNF) opposes the project.
- 3. To legitimize the permit and Elad’s activities, a change in the forest’s status was required. For this purpose, the National Planning and Building Commission convened in March and July 2019 to prepare the necessary changes to the forest’s status.
The zip line project is one of many initiatives by the Elad organization in Jerusalem, where, in every case, the municipality and/or government bodies were involved in transferring responsibility for the sites to the foundation. For example, the archaeological site of the City of David has been operated by the Elad organization for decades, the Israeli government is constructing a cable car to the Elad organization’s tourism complex in the City of David, a camping site at the edge of the Peace Forest was developed with three million shekels of state funds, and the Hinnom Valley was handed over for agro-tourism development under Elad’s responsibility.
Beit Shatz
These projects, along with the latest zip line initiative, represent a tourism activity intertwined with political interests, aimed at allowing the foundation to become a powerhouse in Jerusalem’s tourism sector. Elad seeks to control and manage numerous sites, both in terms of the content delivered to the public and the shaping of the space. Elad’s tourism activities can be seen as a form of “touristic settlement,” designed to make the area as “Jewish-Israeli” as possible and to complicate any future compromise agreement in Jerusalem, where two capitals for two states are envisioned.
For more information, read here.
The name of Elad was absent from the construction notice.
Model of Beit Shatz