By MATTI FRIEDMAN
The Associated Press
Wednesday, November 21, 2007; 2:16 PM
JERUSALEM -- The mayor of Jerusalem announced a plan Wednesday to revamp long-neglected Arab neighborhoods, a step meant to counter growing signs that Israel's leadership is willing to consider ceding parts of the city to the Palestinians.
The news from Mayor Uri Lupolianski appeared timed for release before a crucial Mideast peace conference in Annapolis, Md., next week meant to relaunch talks on an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, and any such agreement will necessarily mean sharing Jerusalem.
"Today, unfortunately, people are busy talking about Jerusalem," Lupolianski said at a news conference. "Through our actions, we will unify and strengthen Jerusalem."
Lupolianski termed the initiative the "Marshall Plan for east Jerusalem," referring to the successful U.S. aid program for Europe after World War II, and said it was meant to correct years of neglect.
Israel captured east Jerusalem from Jordan in 1967 and annexed it. Today, around one-third of the city's 750,000 residents are Palestinians, living in east Jerusalem neighborhoods that lag far behind Jewish areas in employment, infrastructure and education. Palestinians said the new plan would do little to change that.
The plan will see the city invest around $51 million in the central neighborhoods of east Jerusalem, sprucing up the area's underdeveloped commercial center, building parks and hotels, allowing more construction of businesses and homes, and creating closer links with Jewish areas of west Jerusalem, Lupolianski said.
Planners have been at work on the projects for the past year, Lupolianski said. But they are still in the early planning stages and need approval from local and regional authorities. That process could take months or years.
Israeli and Palestinian leaders are set to meet in Annapolis to restart talks on a peace agreement, and Jerusalem is perhaps the thorniest issue facing them. Palestinians want east Jerusalem as the capital of a future state, meaning Israel would have to agree to divide or share the city.
Israel claims the entire city as its capital. The most contentious area is the Old City, home to a disputed holy site at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The compound is known to Jews as the Temple Mount, Judaism's holiest site, revered as the site of two biblical temples. The same compound houses the Al-Aqsa mosque, Islam's third-holiest site and a potent national symbol for Palestinians.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has indicated he might be willing to cede some of the city's peripheral Arab neighborhoods, but that position remains far from the Palestinian demand for control over all of east Jerusalem.
Beyond Israel's emotional attachment to the city, Israelis are concerned that any areas vacated might be taken over by militants, putting Palestinian gunmen just steps away from Jewish neighborhoods.
Pepe Alalo, a dovish member of Jerusalem's City Council, said Lupolianski's plan was "a show for the media" timed for the peace conference.
The new plan budgets only a fraction of what east Jerusalem needs to close the gap with the Jewish parts of the city, Alalo said.
And with the projects so far from implementation, he said, the timing of Lupolianski's announcement made clear it was aimed as a counterweight to the government's peace moves, not at making life better for east Jerusalem residents.
"What is behind this is 100 percent political interest," he said.
In 2005, 62 percent of the city's Arab families lived under the poverty line, according to statistics compiled by the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, an independent research center, compared to 21 percent of Jewish families.
Classrooms in east Jerusalem elementary schools have an average of about 36 students, compared with 24 students per classroom in Jewish neighborhoods, according to Ir Amim, an advocacy group that works for coexistence in the city.
Unlike the Palestinians of the West Bank, east Jerusalem residents receive substantial health and welfare benefits from Israel and can move freely throughout the country. But with few exceptions, they have refused to participate in municipal politics, deeming such involvement to be acceptance of Israeli rule. This has served to further distance them from the city's decision-makers and budgets.
Khalil Tufakji, a Palestinian cartographer and Jerusalem expert, dismissed the new initiative as late and inadequate.
"Forty years after exempting east Jerusalem from development, they are now trying to beautify their situation. We have 40 years of neglect, and we won't be equal to west Jerusalem, regardless of what is spent," Tufakji said.