The courts had the last word this weekend. The Jerusalem District Court threw out the petition against the “Burj Khalifa” tower planned near Mount Herzl, and in a separate case it threw out the petition against two towers at the Jaffa and King George junction, charging those petitioners NIS 75,000 in costs. A third Jerusalem project, 240 homes in Gilo, won final approval from the district planning committee. Down south, the national housing committee cleared a whole new district for deposit in Kiryat Gat: about 11,000 homes. In Rehovot, the Weizmann Institute got final approval to replace a 36-unit dorm with 805 student homes. And the 11th “Dira BeHanacha” lottery sent out its real win notices on Sunday: 7,922 winning households, about 60% of them army reservists. By our own math, a registered reservist had about a 1 in 5 chance of winning. Everyone else had about 1 in 28.
Two rulings, five towers: Jerusalem’s high-rise push wins its week in court
Two separate petitions tried to stop two of Jerusalem’s biggest tower projects. Both just failed.
The first case is the “Epstein compound” in Kiryat HaYovel, nicknamed Jerusalem’s “Burj Khalifa” because its architects, Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill, designed the real one in Dubai. The plan puts a 42-story tower with 240 homes and hotel floors on about 7 dunams near the light rail. A dunam is 1,000 square meters, about a quarter acre. Thirty-five residents and city council members petitioned against it. They argued the tower would loom over the Mount Herzl military cemetery, Yad Vashem, and the Ein Kerem valley. On July 28, Judge Arnon Darel rejected the petition. He wrote that he does not dismiss the bereaved families’ pain, but the choice between planning options belongs to the planning bodies, not the court. The full ruling is public (judgment PDF; coverage in Ynet and Merkaz HaNadlan, July 29).
The second case is the “Kukia compound” at the Jaffa and King George junction, the busiest corner of the city center. The approved plan there: two residential towers of 20 and 35 floors above a five-floor base of shops, offices and hotel space, also on about 7 dunams, next to two light-rail lines and a planned heavy-rail station. Petitioners claimed the approval rested on “extraneous considerations” and that the height, far above the old 10 to 12 floor guidance for the area, was a “meteoric bungee jump.” Judge Nimrod Flax rejected every claim last week and ordered the petitioners to pay NIS 75,000 in costs, NIS 25,000 to each group of respondents (judgment PDF; Merkaz HaNadlan, August 2; TheMarker, August 2).
The same week, the Jerusalem district committee gave final approval to a third tower project: the Odem compound in Gilo. A four-story building with 48 flats will come down, and two towers of 36 and 29 floors with about 240 homes will go up on the light-rail corridor (Bizzness, July 30; Merkaz HaNadlan, August 2).
Our own math, from the plan documents above: the two court-cleared compounds hold at least 240 homes on 14 dunams combined, with the Epstein tower alone packing about 34 homes per dunam. The Gilo approval multiplies the homes on its lot five times over, 240 where 48 stand today. The unit count for the Kukia towers has not been published.
Every path to stopping these towers in court has now failed, and one group of objectors paid for trying. If you own an older flat near a Jerusalem light-rail line, the planning system and now the courts are firmly behind tall, dense rebuilds there. The rulings landed July 28 and late last week; the press caught up on August 2.
Kiryat Gat lines up a district of 11,000 homes
The national committee for preferred housing sites (the Vatmal, a fast-track planning body) approved the “Carmei Gat East” district plan for deposit in late July. Deposit means the plan is now published for public objections before final approval. It is one of the largest single plans in Israel right now: about 11,000 homes in northeast Kiryat Gat, plus hundreds of thousands of square meters of shops and workplaces and a new transport center. The plan comes from the Israel Land Authority together with the city, under the umbrella agreement they signed about a year ago. Six bridges and crossings will tie the new district to Carmei Gat over the railway, with new entrances from Roads 35, 6 and 353, and most homes within walking distance of a planned “Kiryat Gat North” rail station (Israel Hayom, August 2; the city’s own announcement confirms the approval).
Kiryat Gat is already one of the cheapest places where Anglo buyers can get a new family home near a fast train. A deposited 11,000-home plan means years of supply behind the current Carmei Gat market, which cuts the case for overpaying there now. Our Carmei Gat community guide covers the area today, and our report on the state flooding the south with land explains the wider push this plan belongs to.
805 student homes where 36 stand: the Weizmann dorm plan is final
The Central District planning committee gave final approval last week to the Weizmann Institute’s dorm plan in Rehovot, first reported after the committee’s announcement on August 2. The old 36-unit “Sami Cohen” dorm will be demolished. In its place: 805 housing units for students, researchers and staff, in four buildings. Two are 25-story towers along Herzl Street above a commercial floor, and two are mid-rise buildings of 6 to 16 floors behind them, with about 900 square meters of shops facing the street. The site sits next to the Rehovot train station and the planned “Weizmann Institute” metro stop (Merkaz HaNadlan, August 2; news08, August 2).
That is 22 times the housing the site holds today, by our count (805 planned units against 36 existing ones). Hundreds of Weizmann students and visiting researchers currently rent in Rehovot’s regular market. Moving them into campus towers over the next few years should ease pressure on the city’s small-flat rentals, something local landlords should price into long-term plans.
Givatayim’s northwest gets a rulebook, not a bulldozer
The Tel Aviv district committee approved a policy document for northwest Givatayim, the sought-after edge of the city next to Tel Aviv’s job centers, around Katznelson and Aliyat HaNoar streets. Be clear about the stage: a policy document is a set of principles for judging future projects. It grants no building rights and no permits. It exists because in January the committee ordered the city’s original renewal plan for the quarter re-examined, and this is the interim answer: developers and owners can now bring individual projects that fit the rules instead of waiting years for one giant plan. The district planner called it “a planning horizon for the interim period” (news08, August 2; the Planning Administration flagged the approval and its planner’s interview).
If you own an older flat in northwest Givatayim, the years of total uncertainty just narrowed. Projects can move again, one lot at a time. But nobody’s building tomorrow morning, and any developer who tells you otherwise is selling.
A supermarket signs for 25 years in Nesher
Yohananof signed a 25-year lease for a 5,500 square meter flagship store in the Colmobil group’s new commercial compound in Nesher, next to Haifa, as the roughly NIS 100 million project moves into its second phase (ice, August 2; Maariv, August 3). A 25-year anchor commitment is a strong sign of retail confidence in the Haifa metro’s eastern suburbs. Anchor tenants like this usually arrive ahead of housing demand, worth noting if you are weighing the Nesher and Krayot area for a rental purchase.
Sources
Jerusalem District Court ruling, Epstein compound (PDF) · Jerusalem District Court ruling, Kukia compound (PDF) · Ynet · Merkaz HaNadlan (Epstein) · Merkaz HaNadlan (Kukia) · TheMarker · Merkaz HaNadlan (Gilo) · Bizzness · Israel Hayom · Kiryat Gat Municipality · Merkaz HaNadlan (Weizmann) · news08 (Weizmann) · news08 (Givatayim) · Planning Administration · ice (Nesher) · Maariv · Housing Ministry · Bizportal · Israel Land Authority tender 362/2025 · ice (Treasury) · Globes · Merkaz HaNadlan (Avisror) · Merkaz HaNadlan (TAMA 38 ruling)
