Israel, in its never-ending quest to improve Palestine (showing us all how to truly leave things better than you found them, just like signs at campgrounds tell you), is treating the Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem to an Israeli tourist center:
A Jerusalem planning body on Monday approved a plan to raze 22 Palestinian homes in east Jerusalem to make room for an Israeli tourist center, a decision that could raise tensions in the divided city and deepen the conflict with the Obama administration...The plan calls for the construction of shops, restaurants, art galleries and a large community center on the site where some say the biblical King David wrote his psalms. The 22 displaced families would be allowed to build homes elsewhere in the neighborhood, though it is not clear who would pay for them...Barkat says the plan gives a much-needed facelift to Jerusalem's decaying al-Bustan neighborhood, which Israel calls Gan Hamelech, or the King's Garden.
The contested site is a section of a larger neighborhood called Silwan, which is home to some 50,000 Palestinians and 70 Jewish families. Demolitions elsewhere in Silwan have made the neighborhood a hub of tension between Palestinians and Jews.
Israel, generous as ever, is giving Palestinians a direly necessary community center at which they will not be welcome, in a section of the city that is barely occupied by Israeli Jews. That's a lot of spending.
This makes those stupid Palestinians who say they are oppressed or live under apartheid or whatever look dumber than ever.
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