ISRAEL increased Palestinian doubts about its commitment to the peace process yesterday by lifting a bulldozer over the walls of Jerusalem to demolish an Arab community centre and approving the expansion of a West Bank Jewish settlement.
The Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat, summoned foreign diplomats and urged them to put pressure on Israel to stop the demolition, which he called part of a policy to "Judaise" Arab neighbourhoods in the city.
Palestinian legislators said the demolition showed Mr Benjamin Netanyahu's government was not committed to the US-sponsored peace process.
A spokeswoman for the Jerusalem Municipality said the unfinished building, intended by Palestinians as a community centre, was built without a permit. Police sealed off a section of the city's walls before dawn and brought in a crane to hoist a bull-dozer over the top. Palestinians said the building was funded by contributions from Canada and Sweden.
In a separate move, the government said it had approved the building of a new community at a Jewish West Bank settlement. "The neighbourhood in question is within Kiryat Sefer settlement. The building plan was approved in the past by the previous government," the Defence Ministry said.
The newspaper Ma'ariv said the community comprised 1,806 housing units but only 900 would be built in the first stage of the plan. Israel's Housing Ministry said on August 20th it was drafting a plan to approve construction of 5,000 new homes in the West, Bank.
Kiryat Sefer is west of Ramallah and just east of Israel's pre-1967 Middle East war border with the West Bank.