Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed on Monday that his government was advancing plans to develop “all parts of Jerusalem.”
He at a special government meeting marking Israel’s conquest of the city’s eastern sector.
The meeting was held in a divisive east Jerusalem location known as The City of David. It is a popular archaeological and tourist site in the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan, with some of the oldest remains of the 3,000-year-old city.
Critics accuse the site’s operators of pushing a nationalistic agenda at the expense of local Palestinian residents.
At the meeting, the government approved a resolution to encourage and financially support foreign countries in establishing or relocating their embassies to Jerusalem, according to a joint statement by Foreign Minister Gideon Saar and the Minister for Jerusalem Affairs and Jewish Heritage Meir Porush.
Israel captured east Jerusalem, home to the city’s most sensitive holy sites, in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed the area in a move that is not internationally recognized. The Palestinians seek east Jerusalem as the capital of a future independent state.
"Jerusalem, our eternal capital, was reunited 58 years ago in the Six-Day War. It will never be divided again,” Netanyahu said in remarks at the start of the meeting. “We will preserve a united, complete Jerusalem, and the sovereignty of Israel.”
Meanwhile, young Israel nationalists chanted “death to Arab” as they made their way through Muslim neighborhoods of Jerusalem’s Old City ahead of an annual march marking Israel’s occupation of the eastern part of the city.
Palestinian shopkeepers had closed up early and police lined the narrow alleys ahead of the march, which often becomes rowdy and sometimes violent.
Police said they had detained a number of individuals to prevent confrontations.
