Ma’an News Agency, Palestinian Territories
Feb 22 2009

Muslim-Christian group: Israel demolishing entire neighborhoods
Date: 22 / 02 / 2009 Time: 15:58

[Ma’anImages]
Jerusalem ` Ma’an ` A panel of prominent Muslim and Christian leaders
accused Israeli authorities on Sunday of `escalating their war against
Jerusalem."

The group, Jerusalem’s Islamic-Christian Panel, called for Arab and
international actors to `stand firm’ against Israel and `rescue the
holy city.’

Panel Secretary-General Hassan Khater said Israel is `expanding its
persecution against Jerusalemites by targeting entire neighborhoods’
with land confiscation and home demolitions.

He added that residents of the Al-Bustan neighborhood, south of the
Al-Aqsa Mosque, `are now in real danger,’ especially after the city’s
Regional Committee for Planning and Construction cancelled a plan
suggested by its residents.

The committee rejected the appeal after approving another one for the
same area presented by the Israeli municipality to remove the largest
section of the neighborhood, as well as its 1,500 residents, in order
to turn the site into a public park.

Khater told Ma’an that Israel `is trying to fool the residents by
swapping their houses with others in Beit Hanina and elsewhere.’

He added, `This serious development reflects the amount of disdain the
Palestinian Jerusalemites suffer from, and at the same time reveals
the extent of the ongoing process of shifting Jerusalem to a pure
Jewish city, ongoing since the Israeli occupation divided the city in
1967.’

The head of the Islamic-Christian group described iron-gate closure of
parts of the city and new openings between Jerusalem and the
neighborhoods of Ar-Ram and Dahiyat Al-Barid as a policy aimed at
displacing residents of Jerusalem from their city.

`This dangerous step separates more than 60,000 Jerusalem citizens
from their city and has rendered their access to it very difficult and
complicated,’ he added.

Khater explained that Israeli authorities have so far succeeded in
displacing tens of thousands of Christian Palestinians through
imposing difficult living conditions on Palestinians, in general.

He explained that the percentage of Christians in the Holy Land has
dipped to just one percent, while it stood at five percent just
decades before.

`We will take advantage of the pope’s visit on 8 May to call his
attention to the Israeli conspiracy against the presence of the
Christians in Jerusalem and the Holy Land, in general, which has
resulted in a continuous decrease in their numbers,’ he said.

Khater called on the pope to dedicate a portion of his visit to
checking up on the Christian and Muslim residents of Jerusalem.

He added, `Despite the utter condemnation of Israeli TV Channel 10’s
mockery of Jesus Christ and his mother Mary, peace be upon them, we
affirm that oppression and racism against Christians and Muslims in
Israel is escalating.’

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert apologized on Sunday for the
television channel’s spoof of Christian figures, which at one point
sarcastically insisted Mary was not actually a virgin.

Khater highlighted that Christian clerics are subject to mockery and
harassment by radical Jewish residents on their way to the Church of
the Holy Sepulcher, and that settlers often spit on the cross and on
clerics while passing through the Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem’s Old
City.

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