The Bible Museum

Property Sellout in the Capital

“According to Yisrael Kimchi, a researcher at the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies and former chief municipal planner, the luxury mall is a white elephant, which underscores the tension between the haves and have-nots and displays a lack of imaginative urban planning for a city whose "selling" points are its spirituality and history. He pronounces it to be a "meglomoniacal project which will be one big flop." Kimchi says the mall is a ''standard upscale shopping arcade," which can be found in any rich city in Israel and gives no expression to the Old City's uniqueness. It will even have little appeal, he says, for the foreign holiday homeowners. "Who comes to the cradle of civilization to shop for designer clothes?" he asks....”