Rawabi

Coordinates: 32°0′36″N 35°11′6″E / 32.01000°N 35.18500°E / 32.01000; 35.18500

Rawabi (Arabic: روابي‎ Hebrew: רוואבי‎, meaning "The Hills") is the first planned city built for and by Palestinians. in the West Bank, and is hailed as a "flagship Palestinian enterprise." Rawabi is located near Birzeit and Ramallah. The master plan drawn up for the high-tech city, envisages 6,000 housing units, housing a population of between 25 to 40,000 people, spread across six neighborhoods. Construction began in January 2010. By 2014, 650 family apartments housing an estimated 3,000 people had been completed and sold, but could not be occupied while negotiations with Israel over supplying the city with water, which had dragged on for some years, languished. and its apartments stood empty, with Rawabi remaining uninhabited, because the city was waterless, and stood for some years like a ghost town. On March 1, 2015, its developer, Bashar al-Masri, announced that Israel would finally connect the city up to the Israeli-run water grid. In Israel Rawabi is called "The Palestinian Modi'in. The project was criticized by both certain Palestinian movements, such as the Palestinian National BDS Committee, and some Israeli settler groups, the former claiming the use of Israeli materials normalizes the occupation, the latter asserting the project invades Israel and could become a terrorist base. Buyers started moving into apartments in August 2015.