A powerful Israeli cabinet minister is offering to express his gratitude by putting Mr. Trump’s name on a proposed new train station in the Old City.
The station is one that would bring thousands of tourists directly into the Jewish Quarter just a few hundred yards from the Western Wall and the Temple Mount.
In the uneasy days after President Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, some Israelis who cheered the move paid homage — and taunted outraged Palestinians — by posting doctored photos of the Dome of the Rock with the president’s surname plastered across it, as if one of Islam’s holiest shrines had been reduced to the latest gold-plated Trump property.
The minister, Yisrael Katz, who has responsibility for both transportation and intelligence, has built a can-do reputation for seeing through a wide range of infrastructure projects; he also has designs on the prime minister’s office. Although he has been promoting the idea of a railroad stop in the Old City for over a year, he said on Wednesday that it was now a priority, calling it the “most important national project being advanced today at the ministry of transport.”
Mr. Katz said he planned to name it after Mr. Trump “for his courageous and historic decision” and his “contribution in the strengthening of the status of Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish people and the state of Israel.”
But the plan, which would require digging beneath some of the most sensitive acreage on earth, is sure to invite more international criticism, not to mention further antagonize Palestinians. Despite
Mr. Trump’s change in United States policy, announced this month, most of the world does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Old City, which Israel captured along with the rest of East Jerusalem in 1967. The United Nations General Assembly voted 128 to 9 last week to condemn Mr. Trump’s decision.
