Jerusalemites on rented district smoke about secret conversations that they could leave in the hover

Due to leaked negotiation reports between the Keren Kayemet Leisrael-Dem Jewish National Fund and the Jewish-American real estate tycoon Gary Barnett, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, who once triggered the future of the Houses of the Greek Orthodox Church.

The conversations revolve around 570 Dunams (140 acres) of first-class real estate in the upscale valley, rehabilitation, rehabilitation and nayot city parts of Jerusalem, where around 1,200 families live in apartments that have been in the floating for a long time due to the cloudy owners’ structure on which their houses are based.

According to a report dated June 8th in the Financial Daily Calcalist, the deal between the KKL-JNF and Barnett, on which the apartments are extended, would be rented out only 50 Years, far shorter than the residents were looking for.

Homeowners also expressed trouble that the conversations were secret, behind the back, secret, although the reported deal also contains plans to demolish several buildings to build condominiums in their place.

“I am disgusted that KKL-JNF keeps secret meetings about the fate of our houses,” said home ownership that refused to be identified. “We bought our apartment with the understanding that KKL-JNF would take care of these rental contracts, and now they go behind our backs.”

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According to the Calcalist history, a group that the forum called for the rescue of residents in Israel wrote a strongly formulated letter to the Mayor of Jerusalem, Moshe Lion, described the proposed deal as the “conditions of the handover”.

A look at the Marcus Street in Talbieh, one of the Jerusalem district in which the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate landed land to private investors. (With the kind permission of EiperMan Realty)

“These areas were bought by Jews who donated great sums of money to the Zionist institutions to redeem the country of the Jewish people,” the letter said. “These rights belong to the general public and future generations and do not represent the private property of real estate developers.”

KKL-JNF confirmed that negotiations take place, but said that the parties were still far from an agreement, and claimed that the details registered in the Hebrew press were only partially true.

“KKL-JNF works with all parties, including government ministries, tenants and their representatives and other relevant parties to achieve the best solution in this complex matter and always find the best interests of the tenants,” says a statement.

Inquiries for comments that were sent to Barnett’s company Extell Development were not answered until the time of the press.

Time bomb

The negotiations concern one of the most prominent plots of the so-called church country in Jerusalem, which prominently comprises prominent public buildings such as the Great Synagogue and the Israel Museum, a large property of open country with a medieval monastery that is known as the valley of the cross, and luxury hotels such as the Ibbal and Dan Panorama.

In the 1950s, the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, to which the country belonged, rented KKL-JNF in the context of long-term agreements, whereby mainly 99-year contracts are supposed to take place around 2051.

Since then, many extremely valuable buildings have been developed and sold in these areas, also when the country itself remained in church ownership and KKL-Jnf kept the rental agreement. The structure created a unique and complicated legal dynamic in which individuals had their houses, but not the floor below.

The course of these rental contracts has long been seen as a kind of ticking time bomb for real estate owners who have no idea what will happen with their houses as soon as the lease contracts expire. Many have assumed that KKL-JNF will make sure that everything works well in the end, although this was never guaranteed.

The effects of these legal floating are clearly expressed in the lower real estate values ​​for such houses, and the owners say that they cannot commit themselves to make large investments in their houses without more clarity in relation to their future.

The valley of the cross with the Israel Museum on the hill in Jerusalem. (Shhmuel Bar-am)

In 2011, the Greek Orthodox Church, which was fed up, sold a legal pressure and debt a debt, to an investor group called Nayot Komemiyut, led by the Ben David family, at a bargain price of US dollars. In 2023, the consortium sold it for 216 million US dollars.

Gary Barnett

Extell has shown a strong interest in the development of large residential projects on about a dozen different properties within the area located for the construction, some of which are empty, although most of the buildings that are already in place.

With the rental contracts, Extell must first make an agreement with KKL-JNF, an extremely wealthy and powerful organization that has about 13% of the entire country in Israel.

The court has decided that Extell is bound to the same conditions that the church was and demands KKL-JNF the opportunity to extend the rental agreement beyond 2051 beyond 2051, which means that the organization is used considerably in discussions with Barnett.

Sources say that there has been legal uncertainty over the number of years for the KKL-JNF, with the legal opinions between 49 and 99 or even 900 years.

Main suits?

The negotiating conditions that are leaked in the calcalist ensure Extell to start building about 12 for the building in zones, and require that it must hand over ownership to land on the public building KKL-JNF. In the meantime, rental contracts would be extended by 50 years until the turn of the next century.

The relatively short expansion would be used by the suspension in which there are currently being used, depress the household values ​​and make it unlikely that the builders are willing to invest in expensive renovation projects, homeowners complain.

The residents protest against the sale of church land objects to a private developer in this undated photo (Alexander Zahtz)

“That would be terrible for us. If you extend it around 99 years, we would still have about 125 years and urban renewal companies would be interested in expensive Pinui -binui projects,” said a member of the forum to save residents in Israel. “But if there are only 75 years until Extell takes over, it is not a reasonable investment. It would only expand the condition of the suspension in which we are in. There is no reason for KKL-JNF to accept an offer like this.”

Another resident who bought a house in Jabotinsky Street in 2014 described the negotiations as “evil”, even if she did not understand the exact conditions.

“What makes me angry is that the whole thing even happened,” she said. “You gave our outsiders lease, and now nobody knows what will happen. There will be big complaints when this happens.”

The Jerusalem district of Talbieh, looked at the old town of Jerusalem. (Pinybal, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons). The INBAL Hotel can be seen in the foreground.

Instead of offering a long -needed security over the future of their property, the headlines made the situation of homeowners even more precarious, added.

“Too many red flags wave in front of our eyes,” wrote the forum to save residential tenants in Israel in his letter to the Mayor of Jerusalem. “We see negotiations behind the back of the public, meetings in the dark outside of the public eye, obligations of billions of developers, biased leaks for the media and design agreements, which are formulated without consulting with the actual landowners – the residents of the city in a significant contrast to public and local interests.”

A KKL source insisted that there is no reason for turmoil. “Some people say that we don’t negotiate strongly enough. Some say we don’t do enough to benefit the residents,” said the source. “We are working to secure the best possible offer to the residents and to understand that Extell has to achieve a return for his investment.”