ARAB-Israeli environmentalist Raed Fadela was blunt in his response to the news that the Israeli government is looking to build the first Arab city inside Israel since 1948.
"It's like everything in this part of the world," he said. "We hear so many promises that we won't believe it until it's a fact on the ground."
For the first time since the Jewish state's inception, an Arab city is to be built inside Israel to dea
l with the demands of a growing population of the Jewish state's largest minority.
"I'm talking about a modern town where a young couple can buy an apartment and live, like in any other modern city," interior minister Meir Sheetrit told a meeting of Arab-Israeli mayors earlier this month.
Since 1948, about 700 Jewish cities and towns have been recognised, but no Arab city has been founded inside Israel nor have existing towns or villages been allowed to expand beyond their municipality limits. For many Arab-Israelis, who make up about 20% of Israel's population of seven million, the Jewish state's planning laws are a highly visible sign of the constant discrimination they face as Israeli citizens.
"The Israeli government uses planning laws as a tool to control development within Arab towns and villages," said Dr Rasem Khamaysi, a professor of planning and geography at Haifa University, who is also an Arab-Israeli.
"We struggle for the right to build, for the right for housing and to achieve the same quality of life that our fellow Jewish citizens have."
Sheetrit has ordered an inquiry into where and how a city would be built, with a decision by the end of this year. No location has been decided on yet but it is expected to be in the Galilee district in the country's north where the bulk of Israel's Arab population lives.
A married father of four, Fadela, 39, lives in the Arab- Israeli town of Tira, in the area known as the 'Triangle', a region in central Israel predominantly populated by Arabs and located close to the West Bank border.
Tira is only a 10-minute drive north-east of Kfar Saba, a middle-class Israeli town complete with shopping malls, office complexes, apartment blocks and tree-lined streets.
"Tira is a world away from Kfar Saba," explains Fadela, who is also in charge of the education department at the Tira municipality. There are no malls, public parks or industrial zones in Tira and only half of its roads are surfaced. Children play in the streets and the winter rains turn the town's dirt streets into mud baths.
The majority of the town's 20,000 residents live in multi-storey villas, or "multi-generational homes", as Fadela calls it, with grandparents living side-by-side with children and grandchildren.
"This is Arab culture where families live with each other in the same home," said Fadela. "And unlike Jewish towns and cities where the bulk of the land is leased to corporations or government agencies, land in Arab towns and villages is privately owned so there are no public spaces, no parks."
But while Fadela acknowledged cultural factors play a part, it is the Israeli planning laws, he said, which are primarily at fault. "Every town or village in Israel has a blue line drawn around it limiting expansion beyond that line. The difference is that the line for Arab towns and villages has not changed one bit since 1948," he said.
The situation has resulted in high demand for housing space within Arab-Israeli communities. With the planning permit process being slow and unpredictable, Arab residents in urgent need to expand existing homes will build illegal structures on private land, often risking a demolition order from state authorities.
Israel's far right, however, is also sceptical about the plans. David Rotem, a Knesset member of the ultra-nationalist party Yisrael Beiteinu, declared the move as an attempt by the government "to completely destroy Zionism" as it halts construction in Jerusalem and the West Bank while planning to build a new Arab city in the north.
