Jerusalem train station may get Trump name
JERUSALEM — Israel’s transportation minister is pushing ahead with a plan to dig a railway tunnel under Jerusalem’s Old City, passing near sites holy to Jews, Christians and Muslims — and ending at the Western Wall with a station named after U.S. President Donald Trump.
Yisrael Katz’s plan, currently in the initial stages, involves constructing two underground stations and excavating over three kilometres of tunnel beneath downtown Jerusalem and under the politically sensitive Old City. The project would extend Jerusalem’s soon-toopen high-speed rail line from Tel Aviv to the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray.
The route will run close to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where tradition holds that Jesus was crucified and buried, and a contested holy site known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary. Previous excavations by Israel near the holy site — the spiritual epicentre of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — have sparked violent Palestinian protests.
Because of those sensitivities, the proposal will likely meet with heavy resistance from the Palestinians, neighbouring Arab countries and the international community.
Katz, a senior cabinet official who also serves as Israel’s intelligence minister, is a close ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and is seen by many as his likely successor as head of the Likud Party.
Transportation Ministry spokesman Avner Ovadia said the project is estimated to cost more than US$700 million and, if approved, would take four years to complete.
Katz said a high-speed rail station would allow visitors to reach “the beating heart of the Jewish people — the Western Wall and the Temple Mount.” He proposed naming the station after Trump “for his brave and historic decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital” earlier this month.
Trump’s announcement has enraged the Palestinians and much of the Muslim world. The UN General Assembly last week condemned the move. Israel captured East Jerusalem in 1967. The Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.
Ikrema Sabri, a senior Muslim cleric in Jerusalem, denounced the planned train line extension, saying that Palestinians won’t accept “any change or act in the occupied territories.” He said that “giving the name of Trump to this project will not give it any legitimacy. It would be just another implementation of the unacceptable decision of President Trump to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.”