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Jerusalem Arab residents contest highway route - Yahoo! News
JERUSALEM (AP) -- A new Israeli highway project is threatening to add to tensions in Jerusalem by cutting through a quiet, middleclass Arab neighborhood to link a large bloc of Jewish settlements to the city.
The project comes during a flurry of Israeli building in east Jerusalem, the section of the city claimed by the Palestinians as their future capital.
City officials say the road is meant to serve everyone. Critics counter that the road is part of a grand scheme, including construction of thousands of apartments, to solidify Israel's control over the area and sever the connection between the holy city and any future Palestinian state.
"It changes the geography and demography in ways that will make a two-state solution very, very difficult," said Aviv Tatarsky of Ir Amim, an organization that lobbies for equitable treatment of Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem.
The highway project is just four kilometers (2.5 miles) long and will complete a north-south route across the city. It will link two of Israel's most contentious roads, allowing Israeli Jews living in the southern West Bank to zip into Jerusalem and to the coastal city of Tel Aviv with barely a stop.
Israeli work crews have already moved into the Arab neighborhood of Beit Safafa in southeast Jerusalem, and begun construction on the 1.5-kilometer (1-mile) section through the neighborhood.
City officials say the extension will improve transport for Jerusalem's Arabs and Jews. They said they couldn't hold up infrastructure development while waiting for a resolution to the decades-old Mideast conflict.
JERUSALEM (AP) -- A new Israeli highway project is threatening to add to tensions in Jerusalem by cutting through a quiet, middleclass Arab neighborhood to link a large bloc of Jewish settlements to the city.
The project comes during a flurry of Israeli building in east Jerusalem, the section of the city claimed by the Palestinians as their future capital.
City officials say the road is meant to serve everyone. Critics counter that the road is part of a grand scheme, including construction of thousands of apartments, to solidify Israel's control over the area and sever the connection between the holy city and any future Palestinian state.
"It changes the geography and demography in ways that will make a two-state solution very, very difficult," said Aviv Tatarsky of Ir Amim, an organization that lobbies for equitable treatment of Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem.
The highway project is just four kilometers (2.5 miles) long and will complete a north-south route across the city. It will link two of Israel's most contentious roads, allowing Israeli Jews living in the southern West Bank to zip into Jerusalem and to the coastal city of Tel Aviv with barely a stop.
Israeli work crews have already moved into the Arab neighborhood of Beit Safafa in southeast Jerusalem, and begun construction on the 1.5-kilometer (1-mile) section through the neighborhood.
City officials say the extension will improve transport for Jerusalem's Arabs and Jews. They said they couldn't hold up infrastructure development while waiting for a resolution to the decades-old Mideast conflict.
