JERUSALEM: Israeli forces on Sunday began demolishing part of a hotel complex in occupied east Jerusalem to make way for 20 new homes for Jewish settlers.
Three bulldozers were seen working under police protection to demolish part of the former Hotel Shepherd, in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.
"The north half of the building is being demolished and the Israeli authorities want to build in its place 20 homes to benefit settlers who are forming a Jewish neighborhood here," Hagit Ofran, an anti-settlement activist with Peace Now, told AFP.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld confirmed that "police forces have been deployed to the area to maintain calm."
Protesters were at the scene and at least one Arab resident was arrested after fighting with a settler. The settler was not arrested.
Final approval for construction of the new apartments came in March, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held talks in Washington.
The project is financed by US millionaire Irving Moskowitz, who has reportedly provided the money for dozens of Jewish settlement projects in east Jerusalem.
The project envisages 20 luxury apartments, to be built around part of the hotel that will remain standing.
The now-dilapidated former hotel was once the residence of Jerusalem’s mufti Haj Amin Al-Husseini, who became infamous for his ties to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
Though occupied east Jerusalem is largely Palestinian, an increasing number of hardline Israeli settlers have moved into the area’s neighborhoods, sparking fights with Arab residents.
An estimated 2,000 Jewish settlers live in Palestinian neighborhoods in east Jerusalem, although the exact number of properties they own is unclear.
Dmitry Diliani, a member of Fatah’s revolutionary council and a Jerusalem resident, issued a statement condemning the demolition.
"The operation to demolish the Hotel Shepherd in Sheikh Jarrah in Jerusalem is a new violation of the individual, national and historical rights of the Palestinian people," he said.
"The continued implementation of the colonial settlement project on Palestinian land occupied in 1967 and particularly in the city of Jerusalem is proof that the extreme rightwing government of the occupation insists on defying the international community, laws, and international conventions."
The Palestinians regard east Jerusalem as the capital of their promised state and fiercely oppose any attempts to extend Israeli control over it.
Israel captured east Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War and later annexed it in a move the rest of the world never recognized. The Jewish state considers the whole of Jerusalem its "eternal and indivisible" capital.
Science and Technology Minister Daniel Hershkowitz, of the religious-nationalist Habait Hayehudi (Jewish Home) party, defended the demolition and Jewish building in east Jerusalem.
"Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, all parts of Jerusalem, and that place was purchased legally and building there residences for people can only improve the quality of life in Jerusalem," he told reporters.
But, in a sign of the divisive nature of Jewish settlement in the occupied east of the city, Labour Minister Avishay Braverman said he was "very troubled" by news the project was moving forward, warning against "developments that can later destabilize the whole area."
