Architects, activists slam Jerusalem Old City cable car plan

JERUSALEM (AP) — An Israeli plan to build a cable car to Jerusalem’s historic Old City has united architects and Palestinian activists in opposition to a project they said 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 some 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 neighborhoods. The final cable car station will be integrated into a future tourist center run by the organization.

“The cable car will send oblivi- ous tourists flying over the heads of Palestinians and drop them off in the middle of occupied east Jerusalem, the eye of the storm, the... center 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,” she added.

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.