RAMALLAH, Nov. 6 (Xinhua) -- Member of Palestine Liberation Organization executive committee Hanan Ashrawi Wednesday slammed the Israeli plan to build a cable car in East Jerusalem.
"The Israeli cable car project is an obscene violation of the cultural, historical, spiritual, geographic & demographic character of Jerusalem. It is also an illegal assault on the occupied Palestinian city & its people who have been living there for centuries," she said in her Twitter account.
The Palestinian foreign ministry released a statement earlier that it is going to resort to the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), describing the cable car project as a settlement project that comes part of Israel's "colonial projects that replace the historic landmarks and the Judaize the occupied holy city."
The ministry said it is coordinating with Jordan to present the case of the cable car to the UNESCO on Nov. 15.
Israeli authorities on Tuesday gave green light to a plan of a cable car connecting Mount Scopus to the Western Wall, transporting people over the old city in East Jerusalem.
Israeli authorities said that the project will be utilized for transporting about 3,000 people an hour in both directions, where travel time is estimated at about 4.5 minutes and each carriage for 10 passengers.
Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future independent state, while Israel wants all Jerusalem to be its eternal capital.
Israel annexed East Jerusalem in the 1967 war and declared the whole city as its eternal indivisible capital in 1980, but the move has never been recognized by the international community.
