The planned town of Michal was designated to be established in the Gilboa Region - just northeast of Shomron and west of the Jordan River - just above the Yitzpor stream. Families have been waiting for four years to build their homes there, but yesterday (Tuesday), the Planning Council decided that it would endanger the Gilboa Iris, and should not be built.
Michal's cornerstone-laying ceremony was held way back in June 2002, when some 60 religious and non-religious families had already signed up to live there. The town was planned to be an ecological town, with recycled sewage, no asphalt roads, no concrete castings, and the like.
The name Michal was chosen after the daughter of King Saul. Mt. Gilboa, where the king and his son Jonathan met their deaths, has two other communities named after King Saul's offspring: Meirav and Malkishua, as well as Kibbutz Maaleh Gilboa.
However, the Gilboa Iris, a purple-petal flower with a long green stem which is mainly concentrated in the area where Michal was to stand, is in danger of extinction. So say both the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI) and the National Parks Authority. City planner Dina Ringer, working on behalf of the Interior Ministry, also objected to Michal's establishment.
The SPNI has long fought against the decision to build Michal. Its position is that settlement efforts should rather be placed in expanding existing towns, as opposed to building new ones that might compete with each other for resources.
Danny Tamari of the Beit She'an Valley Regional Council, who has been accompanying and supporting the Michal core group of families for four years, is unhappy with the decision. Tamari feels that a new community would have been good for the other residents of the Gilboa region, and that the Gilboa Iris is being preserved not only in open areas, but inside the towns as well.
Neither is the "mayor" of nearby Kibbutz Maaleh Gilboa, Tzadok Lifshitz, happy with the decision. He said that a number of years ago, "our kibbutz made an official decision welcoming the new community. However, over the years, the greens ran a very aggressive campaign - I would even call it brutal, even if democratic - and managed to sign up some members against the plan. In any event, I and most others still feel that it would have been very good for the area; we are only three communities here, and it could have helped build up this important region, so close to the Shomron and the Jordan Valley."
Tzadok noted the irony: "The residents of Michal were actually very environment-minded, and were planning to build a community in that spirit. And yet still, the greens overrode them. It's sad; I don't think that after waiting so long, many of these families will want to try again - they'll probably just stay where they are, in the city or wherever."
One of Tzadok's neighbors said that concerns about "competition for resources" are nonsense. "We want to settle the Land of Israel, and that's what counts," she told Arutz-7.
Michal's cornerstone-laying ceremony was held way back in June 2002, when some 60 religious and non-religious families had already signed up to live there. The town was planned to be an ecological town, with recycled sewage, no asphalt roads, no concrete castings, and the like.
The name Michal was chosen after the daughter of King Saul. Mt. Gilboa, where the king and his son Jonathan met their deaths, has two other communities named after King Saul's offspring: Meirav and Malkishua, as well as Kibbutz Maaleh Gilboa.
However, the Gilboa Iris, a purple-petal flower with a long green stem which is mainly concentrated in the area where Michal was to stand, is in danger of extinction. So say both the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI) and the National Parks Authority. City planner Dina Ringer, working on behalf of the Interior Ministry, also objected to Michal's establishment.
The SPNI has long fought against the decision to build Michal. Its position is that settlement efforts should rather be placed in expanding existing towns, as opposed to building new ones that might compete with each other for resources.
Danny Tamari of the Beit She'an Valley Regional Council, who has been accompanying and supporting the Michal core group of families for four years, is unhappy with the decision. Tamari feels that a new community would have been good for the other residents of the Gilboa region, and that the Gilboa Iris is being preserved not only in open areas, but inside the towns as well.
Neither is the "mayor" of nearby Kibbutz Maaleh Gilboa, Tzadok Lifshitz, happy with the decision. He said that a number of years ago, "our kibbutz made an official decision welcoming the new community. However, over the years, the greens ran a very aggressive campaign - I would even call it brutal, even if democratic - and managed to sign up some members against the plan. In any event, I and most others still feel that it would have been very good for the area; we are only three communities here, and it could have helped build up this important region, so close to the Shomron and the Jordan Valley."
Tzadok noted the irony: "The residents of Michal were actually very environment-minded, and were planning to build a community in that spirit. And yet still, the greens overrode them. It's sad; I don't think that after waiting so long, many of these families will want to try again - they'll probably just stay where they are, in the city or wherever."
One of Tzadok's neighbors said that concerns about "competition for resources" are nonsense. "We want to settle the Land of Israel, and that's what counts," she told Arutz-7.