The "New Migron" and Other Building in Southern Binyamin

For whatever reason, the government has been forging ahead building a "new Migron" between the gas station and the Yekev Psagot visitors center.  They are trying to make the pre-assembled cardboard houses look like a real community.

It's located at the Ma'avar Michmas Junction which is the turn-off to Psagot, Kochav Ya'akov and Tel Zion.  This is just a kilometer north of the ever-expanding Sha'ar Binyamin Industrial Zone/Shopping Center.

Sha'ar Binyamin is very much like a rural/suburban shopping center.  It has a large discount supermarket, Rami Levi, a couple of clothing stores, a toy store, bakery cafe`, shoe stores, medical clinic, police station, bicycle shop and more.  It took a few years for it to get really started, but now the businesses are doing well and there aren't any empty shops.  That's why new buildings are going up.

Migron is actually just north of the Yekev. There has been a legal ping pong game about its status and future for years already.

The state asked to delay the operation until the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, citing security concerns that an evacuation during this period could set off clashes between settlers and Palestinians. The court will reconvene on Aug. 21.

Appease aka Peace Now has been spearheading, funding (with the assistance of the New Israel Fund) the legal witch hunt to destroy Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria for a long time.  The case against Migron is filled with holes, but the Supreme Court is very Leftist and judges according to ideology.

Gershon Gontovnik, who is representing Migron's residents, rejected GOC Central Command Maj. Gen. Nitzan Alon's concerns over possible acts of violence during Migron's future evacuation. "Whatever the final decision may be, the residents are determined not to incite riots," said Gontovnik. "The way we see it, the delay in declaring Migron a legal settlement is nothing more than a logistical one. This process (of legal recognition) is important to the residents, who are willing to transfer to the temporary site the government has designated for them." (complete article)

Arabs are taken at their word, even when there is no legal documentation.  The Migron case is one of the strangest, because the Arabs who supposedly own the land didn't fulfill any of the requirements the Jordanian Government had imposed on them for ownership.  They were supposed to have developed the land within a certain amount of time, and they didn't.

Both Sha'ar Binyamin and Migron are just north of Jerusalem, an excellent location.  The climate is just a bit milder than Jerusalem, too.  And about the Migron plans, many people are hoping that the legal case against the present location will finally lose, and the new one will be a new neighborhood.  My contact there says that they get calls all the time from people who want to move there.

Considering that we've been hearing of our imminent destruction/removal from Shiloh the entire thirty-one years we're here, I don't take the dire predictions very seriously.