ISRAELI DEVELOPERS AIM TO INSTALL A ZIPLINE, CABLE CAR AND MORE TO HELP PEOPLE REACH ANCIENT JERUSALEM

From high on a ridge overlooking Jerusalem, visitors can see over a valley to the Old City's limestone walls and the rooftops of homes, shops and religious edifices.

Within the walls are some of the world's most revered sites of Jewish, Christian and Islamic religions. It is home also to the most fervent objections to and acceptances of the troublesome question over the state of Palestine.

The walls contain a population of 880,000 people in a hilltop enclave — an area of less than one square kilometre. Outside those walls lays hilly, rocky terrain not yet fully developed.

There, many other important archeological ruins and shrines sit in what's called the “holy basin.”

On one side is the plateau of the Old City. On the other is the Hinnom Valley preserved green space, the site of ancient sacrifices and burials, to which some local Palestinians claim ownership. In between is the Green Valley, through which runs the divisive boundary separating the eastern Jewish state from the contested western Palestinian one.

For several years, developers Elad has been planning to make use of that undeveloped land, to ease the challenges of getting more people into the valley and from there, to access the historic areas within the walls. While critics abhor its “Disneyesque” plans and see the developers as yet another example of how Israel wields architecture and urban planning in its quest to rule all Jerusalem, others say it would do the city good.

The plans call for, incongruently, a zip line of almost a kilometre in length in and around the valley's Peace Forest. Elad also has plans to install a cable car, a pedestrian suspension bridge across the valley, and visitor centres.

“A total outrage against a fragile city,” the renowned Israeli-born Canadian architect Moshe Safdie, living near the Western Wall, told the New York Times in 2019 about the cable-car plan. “An esthetic and architectural affront.”

Elad, for its part, insists the plans will revitalize long-neglected areas that have been difficult to reach, overtaken by drug dealers and prone to vandalism and arson.