RAMALLAH, Palestine, Nov 7 (NNN-WAFA) – Member of Palestine Liberation Organisation executive committee, Hanan Ashrawi, slammed Israeli plan to build a cable car in East Jerusalem.
“The Israeli cable car project is an obscene violation of cultural, historical, spiritual, geographic demographic character of Jerusalem. It is also an illegal assault on the occupied Palestinian city & its people, who have been living there for centuries,” she said.
The Palestinian foreign ministry released a statement that, it is going to resort to the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), describing the cable car project as a settlement project, that comes part of Israel’s “colonial projects, that replace the historic landmarks and Judaise the occupied holy city.”
The ministry said, it is coordinating with Jordan to present the case to UNESCO on Nov 15.
Israeli authorities gave green light to a plan of a cable car, connecting Mount Scopus to the Western Wall, transporting people over the old city in East Jerusalem.
Israeli authorities said, the project will be utilised for transporting about 3,000 people an hour, in both directions, where travel time is estimated at about 4.5 minutes and each carriage for 10 passengers.
Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future independent state, while Israel wants all of Jerusalem to be its eternal capital.
Israel annexed East Jerusalem in the 1967 war and declared the whole city as its eternal indivisible capital in 1980, but the move has never been recognised by the international community.– NNN-WAFA