JERUSALEM (AFP) — An Israeli local council said Wednesday it will spend millions of dollars beautifying a settlement in East Jerusalem.
Jerusalem city council said in a statement it planned to use 50 million shekels ($12.5 million) to fund construction of a park, children’s playgrounds, green spaces and new street lighting in Har Homa, as well as football and basketball grounds.
It did not give a precise time-frame for the spending plan, only saying work would begin “in the near future”.
Construction first began on Har Homa — or Jabal Abu Ghneim as the site is known to Palestinians — in 1997, well after the Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.
It sparked violent Palestinian protests and a freeze by the Palestinian Authority of high-level contacts with Israel.
The settlement construction is considered a breach of the Oslo accords by Palestinians and the international community but not by Israel, which does not see East Jerusalem as occupied territory.
Over 75 percent of Palestinians, and 82 percent of children, live below the poverty line in East Jerusalem, according to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.
Despite forming nearly half of the city’s population, only around 10 percent of Jerusalem’s municipal budget is spent on Palestinians.
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