During a ceremony in Lod on Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that the city will build a golf course spanning 1,200 dunams (about 300 acres) near Ginton that will be named in honor of U.S. President Donald Trump.
Netanyahu appeared at the event to mark the expansion of Lod’s second housing-development agreement with the state. He did not address two contentious issues dominating the national agenda: the expected UN Security Council vote on a U.S. proposal that includes a “pathway to a Palestinian state” and the government’s decision, revealed by ynet, to form a non-state commission of inquiry into the Oct. 7 massacre.
Netanyahu focused on Lod’s growth and then on rising crime in the Arab community. “The crime in the Arab public is a crime,” he said. “We must overcome it and we are working on it constantly. We succeeded in overcoming several obstacles, one of them being the legal advisers.”
City council member Michal Hen Sufir interrupted him, saying old Lod “is becoming an enclave of crime” and that investment flows to newer neighborhoods instead of older areas that have endured decades of neglect. She said the lack of community centers and educational services leaves mainly “the elderly and the vulnerable.” Netanyahu listened without interrupting, asked her name, and told her, “You have courage. That is the most important trait.”
Netanyahu received applause at the event, standing alongside Mayor Yair Revivo and Likud ministers and lawmakers in what appeared to be the opening shot of a campaign atmosphere. The city’s new agreement allocates 5.8 billion shekels for development, including an expected addition of 21,000 housing units and major investment in the historic core.
Earlier in the day, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich criticized Netanyahu, saying the prime minister “is wasting precious time on unimportant matters.” Minister Haim Katz added, “Yes, he is wasting his time in court.”
Smotrich also dismissed the U.S. “pathway” plan ahead of the Security Council vote, saying, “It will not happen. My life’s mission is to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state in the heart of our land.” National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir told his Otzma Yehudit faction that recent discussion about a Palestinian state “may receive an additional push” at the UN and said “the invented people called the Palestinian people cannot be allowed to have a state.”
