JERUSALEM: A plan to raze 22 Arab homes to make way for an archaeological park in east Jerusalem drew fire from all sides on Tuesday, with the Palestinians calling it a provocation and Israel’s defense minister lamenting its timing.
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas urged Washington to intervene to block the project which the Jerusalem municipality approved on Monday.
The US administration, meanwhile, said the move "undermines trust" and could hinder the indirect negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians that started in May.
Even Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak was critical of the move, which could prove embarrassing for hawkish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu coming just two weeks before he is due to hold talks with US President Barak Obama.
Israeli relations with the United States plummeted in March when the municipality announced during a visit by US Vice President Joe Biden that it planned to build 1,600 homes for Jewish settlers in Arab east Jerusalem.
"This can’t stand," Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erakat told AFP in Amman, where Abbas was to meet Jordan’s King Abdullah II with the park project high on their agenda.
"I have conveyed a message from president Mahmud Abbas to the American administration this morning, urging their direct intervention to revoke this Israeli order," he said.
Barak, who was in Washington for talks with US officials, also criticized the announcement, though his remarks focused on the timing rather than the substance of the decision.
"Jerusalem municipality and the (planning and building) committee are not demonstrating any common sense or any sense of timing – and it is not the first time," Barak said a statement released by his office.
In March, Netanyahu asked the city to delay the project to avoid sparking conflict in Jerusalem and further straining ties with Washington.
But the city’s planning and building committee on Monday approved the so-called Gan Hamelech (King’s Garden) project, the Hebrew name for the area outside Jerusalem’s Old City known as Al-Bustan to its mostly Arab residents.
Under the plan, 22 homes will be razed, while another 66 would be legalized. The 88 homes all had been slated for demolition because they were built without Israeli permits.
Many Palestinians in east Jerusalem risk having their homes razed because they were built or expanded without the necessary permits, which are nearly impossible to obtain.
Al-Bustan is part of the so-called Holy Basin, believed to be the site of ancient Jerusalem during the time of the biblical kings David and Solomon.
It is now a crowded Arab neighborhood in a part of the city occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed in a move not recognized internationally.
Israel considers the whole of Jerusalem as its "eternal and indivisible" capital while the Palestinians see east Jerusalem as the capital of their promised state.
