At The Opening Of A Tense Week, Israeli Government Okays Huge east Jerusalem 'Sovereignty Plan'

Opening tense week, government okays huge East Jerusalem 'sovereignty plan'

Government ministers vowed Sunday to “deepen Israeli sovereignty” in East Jerusalem as they approved a hefty series of plans to fete Jerusalem Day — the anniversary of when Israeli forces took control of the Old City and Arab-majority East Jerusalem in 1967 — in what they described as a unique opportunity created by President Donald Trump’s decision to move the US embassy to Israel’s capital.

At a celebratory cabinet meeting held in Jerusalem’s Bible Lands Museum, the cabinet authorized programs in the capital estimated at some NIS 2 billion ($560 million), which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said were intended to “​build up and develop Jerusalem, east and west, north and south.”

The proposals given the go-ahead include plans to formalize land ownership claims in East Jerusalem and transfer Palestinian schools in the area to use of the Israeli curriculum. Ministers also earmarked budgets for the development of increasingly Jewish areas of the majority-Arab Old City and Mount of Olives, and to build a cable car from West Jerusalem to the Western Wall.

“​We will make a series of decisions to​ ​build up and develop Jerusalem, east and west, north and south, in all directions – to both reveal its past and build its future,” Netanyahu said at the start of the meeting. “We dreamed of returning to rebuild it, the city that is joined together – this is exactly what we are doing today​.”

Telling ministers that Jerusalem is “the capital of our people, and only of our people,” Netanyahu also acknowledged the controversial nature of the plans, which encroach on parts of the city claimed by Palestinians as the capital of a future Palestinian state.

“I know that there will be difficulties along the way; there have been difficulties for the past 70 years. We have met them since 1949 and up to recent years. We will also meet them in the future​,” the prime minister said.

The meeting came at the start of a politically tense week for Jerusalem that will see the US move its embassy to the capital on Monday, and the culmination of over six weeks of protests along the Gaza border, when Palestinians mourn the “catastrophe” of the creation of the Jewish state, on both Monday and Tuesday.

Later on Sunday, thousands of Israelis took part in the annual Jerusalem Day parade celebrating 51 years since the reunification of the city during the 1967 Six Day War.

The march, in which primarily religious teenagers parade through the Old City decked in white and blue, the colors of the Israeli flag, has raised tensions over its route through the Old City’s Muslim Quarter. In previous years, the march has sparked sporadic incidents of violence between Israeli revelers and local Palestinian residents in East Jerusalem.

The most contested of the plans relate to Israel’s bureaucratic control over mainly Palestinian East Jerusalem, which was captured in the 1967 Six Day War and later annexed in a move never recognized by the international community.

According to the “Land Regulation” proposal, one of the programs authorized by cabinet ministers, Israel will attempt to establish full administrative control over territory in the eastern part of Jerusalem by settling land disputes between Palestinian neighbors and demarcating property boundaries.

Israel currently has no accurate record of land ownership claims in East Jerusalem, the Justice Ministry says, due to it never before forcing Palestinian residents to present certifiable documents of ownership.