RAMALLAH: The head of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, Sheikh Raed Salah, said yesterday that Israeli authorities were planning to “evacuate and demolish 1,700 homes in East Jerusalem during the current year.”
Salah, also the founder of the Al-Aqsa Foundation for Endowment and Heritage, said in a press statement that the Israeli authorities would demolish hundreds of houses in different parts of the city. “Israel is planning to build a police station of 140 square meters adjacent to the Al-Aqsa Mosque,” he said.
According to Salah, Israel “has announced that it has earmarked $150 million to Judaize the Old City and to increase the number of synagogues around the Al-Aqsa Mosque.”
The Israeli measures, he warned, were “more dangerous than the occupation of the city during the 1967 War.”
On his part, the head of the Islamic Higher Committee in Jerusalem, Sheikh Ikremah Sabri, said: “More than 5,500 Israeli housing units were under construction in occupied Jerusalem and 73,000 in the West Bank in order to accommodate more than one million Jews.”
Sabri warned that “the expansion of settlements and the apartheid (separation) wall are aimed to Judaize Jerusalem, isolate it from the West Bank and endorse its annexation as Israel’s capital.”
He added that “there were networks of tunnels heading toward Al-Aqsa Mosque from the west and south which had led to cave-ins in Silwan and Jerusalem’s Old City and fissures in the historical buildings and the eastern and southern walls of Islam’s third holiest mosque.”
Meanwhile, Israeli police broke up a series of Palestinian cultural events in Jerusalem yesterday, disrupting a children’s march and bursting balloons at a schoolyard celebration.
Israel said the cultural events violated a ban on Palestinian political activity in the occupied city, but Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas criticized the crackdown. Palestinian activists organized the events to celebrate the Arab League’s designation of Jerusalem as the capital of Arab culture for 2009.
Ahead of yesterday’s events, Israeli Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter banned the celebrations from taking place, saying the Palestinian Authority was behind the activities. Israel does not allow the Palestinian government to have a presence in Jerusalem, saying it undercuts Israel’s claim to the city.
At one event, teenage girls at an East Jerusalem school released a few dozen balloons in the red, white, green and black colors of the Palestinian flag over the walled city. Israeli military police and soldiers quickly moved into the schoolyard and popped the remaining balloons, students said.
Zein, an 18-year-old student, said the police popped them with their hands and told them they weren’t allowed to release them into the air. She asked not to use her last name, fearing further problems with the police.
An Israeli intelligence official at the school said the balloons were burst “because they are Palestinian.”
Police spokesman Shmuel Ben Ruby said 12 people were detained. Police also broke up attempts by Palestinian school children to march into the Old City.
Speaking in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, Abbas said Israel’s policies in Jerusalem were undermining the chances for peace.
“The policy of discrimination, suppression, stealing the land, destruction of neighborhoods and homes, the policy of falsifying the past, destroying the present and stealing the future should all stop if peace is to have a real opportunity in this land,” he said.
— With input from agencies
