Rawabi

Rawabi 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 both 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, 3,000 Palestinians had taken up residence there. ()