Oy vey! Architects, activists slam Jerusalem Old City cable-car plan
JERUSALEM — An Israeli plan to build a cable car system to Jerusalem’s historic Old City has united architects and Palestinian activists in opposition to a project they say is both an eyesore and a ploy to entrench Israeli control over the city’s contested eastern sector.
Developers say the proposed project is meant to relieve snarling traffic and will ferry about 3,000 tourists an hour from the western sector directly to the Old City, in east Jerusalem. It follows a series of Israeli projects in the combustible city that have enraged the Palestinians.
Further complicating matters is the project’s association with the Elad Foundation, a group that has settled Jewish nationalists in the heart of Jerusalem’s Arab neighbourhoods. The final cable car station will be integrated into a future tourist centre run by the organization.
“The cable car will send oblivious tourists flying over the heads of Palestinians and drop them off in the middle of occupied east Jerusalem, the eye of the storm, the … centre of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” said Betty Herschman of Ir Amim, an advocacy group that promotes equality in the city. “This cable car is putting new facts on the ground that undermine any possibility for a peace process.”
Israel captured east Jerusalem, along with the limestone-walled Old City, in the 1967 Mideast war and later annexed it, a move never recognized internationally. The Palestinians claim the eastern sector as capital of a future state while Israel considers the entire city its eternal, undivided capital. The conflicting claims to east Jerusalem lie at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and have frequently spilled over into violence.
In recent years, Israel has carried out a series of initiatives, billed as development projects, that have infuriated Palestinians. Israel built a light rail train through both parts of the city, abutting the Old City and snaking through predominantly Arab neighbourhoods. The train is popular with Arabs and Jews, but it has also been the target of Palestinian rioters.
Another proposed plan involves digging a railway tunnel under Jerusalem’s Old City, passing near sites holy to Jews, Christians and Muslims. The proposed line would end at the Western Wall, with a station named after U.S. President Donald Trump, who is cheered in Israel for having recognized Jerusalem as its capital.
Beyond political opposition, the cable car has faced an outcry from urban planners and architects.
“This project is an outrage, an affront to our historic skyline,” said Moshe Safdie, a renowned Israeli-Canadian architect who signed a petition against the plan along with 70 Israeli figures from architecture, archaeology and academia. “This will Disneyfy a sacred place.”