RAMALLAH: The Islamic Christian Commission in Support of Jerusalem and Holy Sites on Saturday warned that Israeli authorities have allocated $15 billion for the Judaization of Al-Quds (Jerusalem).
The commission said in a press statement that the “Zionist project called Jerusalem 2020” would annex all settlement blocks around Jerusalem and expropriate lands for the plan’s implementation.
It added that the project would lead to more Jews from coastal areas inside Israel coming to live in Jerusalem to make the city a “Zionist majority” one.
“The number of Palestinians in Jerusalem will become 12 percent by the year 2020 while the percent of Jews will become 88 percent ... Jerusalem then will be empty of its original Arab residents and owners,” it added.
Commenting on the threats made by Israeli Mayor of Jerusalem Nir Barkat to demolish all Palestinian homes in the neighborhood of Silwan, the commission said this would lead to the displacement of hundreds of Palestinian families.
It called on the UN Security Council to implement the seventh article of the UN Convention on Israel and to stop the Judaization of Jerusalem.
Hasan Khater, secretary-general of the Commission, told Arab News that the “Israeli atrocities against Jerusalem have reached an intolerable and condoned point.”
Khater added that “the internal Palestinian split, the feeble Palestinian means and the lack of Arab and Islamic strategy makes it difficult to stop Israeli Judaization projects in the city.”
Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 war, annexed it and has since built settlements that are home to more than 200,000 Israelis.
Control over the city has been seen as the most sensitive and thorniest issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Palestinians hope to make East Jerusalem the capital of their future state but Israel says the city is its eternal capital.
On Friday, the Israeli daily Haaretz said that a group of Palestinian and Israeli public figures had proposed a plan to create a mixed Jewish-Arab neighborhood in Jerusalem.
The report said that the residential area is planned at Tantour, between the West Bank city of Bethlehem and the south Jerusalem settlement of Gilo. It would feature 800 housing units and a hotel district. The report said the plan is the first since Jerusalem’s unification after the 1967 war.
