03/11/2005
By Jonathan Lis and Meron Rapaport, Haaretz Correspondents
American Jewish millionaire Irwin Moskowitz is behind a plan to establish a new Jewish neighborhood within the Sheikh Jarrah quarter of East Jerusalem.
The new neighborhood is slated to be set up on a hill between the National Police Headquarters and the Hyatt Hotel, thus creating a contiguity stretch of Jewish neighborhoods through eastern Jerusalem, reaching Mount Scopus. A request to build the complex was submitted to the Jerusalem Municipality this week.
The proposed neighborhood would be built around the Shepherd's Hotel, which Moskowitz acquired in 1985. Organizers hope to build six eight-story buildings containing 90 apartments, as well as a synagogue and kindergarten.
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If built, the Shepherd's Hotel complex would abut the Shimon Hatzadik neighborhood, where six or seven Jewish families have taken up residence and there is a yeshiva with approximately 50 students. Jewish activists are trying to acquire control of more of that neighborhood, which borders on the American Colony Hotel and Route 1. The buildings there were apparently in Jewish hands before 1948 and are currently inhabited by
Palestinians.
Moskowitz, who first hit the headlines when he built a Jewish neighborhood in the Ras al-Amud quarter, has recently stepped up his activities in East Jerusalem. He is behind the building of a new Jewish neighborhood inside the Old City and has bought another site in Abu Dis, just outside Jerusalem. He apparently was responsible also for buying
two hotels just inside the Jaffa Gate from the Greek Orthodox Church.
More at;
Haaretz 
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