JERUSALEM: Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad was on Tuesday to open a refurbished school on the outskirts of east Jerusalem after Israel barred him from opening a second one for political reasons.
The spat erupted late last week after Fayyad announced plans to open two renovated schools in the occupied and annexed eastern sector of the city, both of which lie on the West Bank side of Israel’s giant separation barrier which snakes through the city.
However, one of the schools is located in the Arab neighborhood of Anata, part of which falls within the Israeli municipal boundaries of Jerusalem — an area which is considered off-limits for any official activity by the Palestinians.
Following pressure and protests by right-wing lobby group Forum for the Land of Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday ordered the security establishment to bar Fayyad from officiating at the opening ceremony in Anata.
"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered during a meeting with the security establishment not to let the Palestinian Authority conduct events and ceremonies in the municipal area of Jerusalem," a statement from his office said late on Monday.
Immediately afterwards, Israel’s Interior Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch issued a warrant barring all Palestinian Authority officials from holding events "in Israeli territory without special permission."
Any such events would be stopped by the police, said the warrant.
Fayyad aide Ghassan Khatib told AFP late on Monday that the premier would go ahead with the planned opening of the school in Dahiyat Al-Barid, which is located just outside the municipal boundaries and therefore of no interest to Israel, but he would not be opening the school in Anata.
Israel seized Arab east Jerusalem during the 1967 Six-Day War and annexed in a move not recognized by the international community. In 2002, it began building a massive separation barrier around the West Bank in a bid to prevent Palestinian attacks.
In Jerusalem, some parts of the city’s eastern sector have been left on the West Bank side of the barrier, although the city council is legally required to provide services to residents there, including health, education, police and emergency services.
In practice, many of these areas receive little funding, and in several cases the Palestinian Authority has stepped in to fund the renovation of schools or the tarmacking of roads.
Israel claims the whole of Jerusalem as its "eternal, indivisible capital" but the Palestinians want the eastern half of the city as the capital of their future promised state.
The status of Jerusalem is one of the most intractable issues of the Middle East conflict.
