Rawabi (, 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 envisages a high tech city with 6,000 housing units, housing a population of between 25,000 and 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 over supplying the city with water stalled. The city remained without water; the delay was attributed to the Israeli–Palestinian Joint Water Committee, with Israelis blaming Palestinians for the delay and Palestinians blaming Israelis. On 1 March 2015, its developer, Bashar al-Masri, announced that Israel would finally connect the city up to the Israeli-controlled water grid. In Israel Rawabi is called "The Palestinian Modi'in." The project was criticized by 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. By May 2017, despite difficulties with flying Israeli checkpoints controlling the road to the city, Masri claimed that 3,000 Palestinians had taken up residence there, though the Palestinian census for the same year only listed 710 residents.
Location
Rawabi is northwest of Ramallah, north of Birzeit, to the north of Jerusalem, 40 km to the east of Tel Aviv, and south of Nablus. Amman, the capital of Jordan, is to the east. In addition, the Israeli settlement of Ateret is nearby. Masri envisages the latter as becoming a suburb of Rawabi in the future. The construction site stretches over two ridges, above sea level. On a clear day, it is possible to see the Mediterranean Sea, to the west, and the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv from the site. Rawabi's municipal boundaries will encompass 6,300,000 square meters of land. Residential and commercial development is based on a population estimate of 40,000.
Financing
One problem was that the West Bank lacked a traditional mortgage system. To that end, the development was linked to a $500m affordable mortgage scheme. The Washington Post reports that Rawabi "is specifically designed for upwardly mobile families of a sort that in the United States might gravitate to places such as Reston, VA. The developments are also relying on another American import, the home mortgage, including creation of a Fannie Mae-style institution for the West Bank".
Rawabi is the largest private sector project in Palestinian history. It was initiated at the Palestine Investment Conference, which took place in Bethlehem in 2008. The project involves a public-private partnership between Masri's property investment firm, Bayti (My home) Real Estate Investment Company, and his primary corporation, Masser International, which provided a third of the billion dollar investment, together with financial backing from Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment Company (the Qatar Investment Authority's property investment fund), Massar International, and the Palestinian National Authority.
The total cost of the development, mostly funded by the Qatari company LDR and Masri, a native of Nablus and Palestinian multimillionaire, is estimated at US$850 million. As of June 2015, the total investment in Rawabi is US$1.2 billion. Masri sees the development as an integral part of a nation-building project, the construction of a future Palestinian state. He makes the claim that when he was a boy in Nablus, merely carrying a Palestinian flag on the streets was sufficient to get one shot by Israeli soldiers. To complete the project, it was calculated that 8,000 and 10,000 new jobs would be created in the Palestinian construction sector. The Palestinian Authority is responsible for providing off-site infrastructure, while Bayti is tasked with the design and development of the city. According to The Rawabi economic growth strategy, from 3,000 to 5,000 new jobs in "knowledge economy" industries including information technology, pharmaceuticals and health care would result from its development.