Israel advances Jerusalem cable car plan

Israeli authorities advanced Tuesday the plan to build a cable car in Jerusalem whose route will connect the west of the city with the occupied East, reported Haaretz.

The National Infrastructure Committee approved the plan for the cable car, whose route will terminate in Silwan, occupied East Jerusalem.

“The public will now have 60 days to file objections before the project can receive final planning approval”, Haaretz stated.

The stop in occupied East Jerusalem will be located outside the Old City walls, at the site of a planned ‘visitor centre’ for the settler-run ‘City of David’.

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The project is being promoted by the Tourism Ministry and the Jerusalem Development Authority, over the objections of a number of stakeholders, including Palestinians, and Israelis who criticise the plan as an eye-sore which fails to solve the traffic problem it is allegedly designed to alleviate.

“As far as I know, and I’ve researched the topic, there is no other historical city in the world that allowed a cable car to be built within the visual core of its historical heritage,” Moshe Safdie, a renowned Israeli architect, wrote in an analysis of the project last year.

Emek Shaveh, a left-wing group of archaeologists, will lodge objections to the plan. A statement from the organization described the plan as “destructive” and charged that it would damage the walls of the Old City and the skyline of the Old City basin.