Israel wants to name a train station after Donald Trump to thank him for recognizing Jerusalem as its capital, but the site of the planned building could be as divisive as the U.S. president's declaration.
Transport Minister Israel Katz said on Wednesday he had chosen a proposed subway stop near the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City - right in the middle of the area that the Palestinians want as their own future capital.
"I have decided to name the Western Wall station ... after U.S. President Donald Trump for his courageous and historic decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish people and the State of Israel," Katz said in a statement.
The envisaged underground extension of a high-speed rail link between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem is still on the drawing board and a transport ministry spokeswoman said other departments still needed to approve it.
The announcement was quickly condemned by Palestinian leaders already angered by Trump's Dec. 6 decision to overturn decades of U.S. policy on the city.
"The Israeli extremist government is trying to race against time to impose facts on the ground in the city of Jerusalem," Wasel Abu Youssef, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization's Executive Committee, told Reuters.
A ministry spokeswoman said the proposed station and underground extension still required the approval of various governmental planning committees, and gave no date for when a final go-ahead might be given. She said she did not know where funds for the estimated $700-million rail add-on would come from.
Trump's Jerusalem announcement has enraged the Palestinians and much of the Muslim world. The U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted a resolution last week condemning the move, with several traditional American allies breaking with Washington to vote in favor of the motion.
Israel captured east Jerusalem, which includes the Old City, in 1967, and annexed it in a move not recognized internationally. The Palestinians claim east Jerusalem as the future capital of their state, and a longstanding international consensus holds that the fate of the city should be decided through direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
Digging railway tunnels to the Western Wall would also entail excavating in Jerusalem's Old City, where religious and political sensitivities — as well as layers of archaeological remains from the city's 3,000-year history — could make for a logistical and legal quagmire.
Last year an initiative to convert an already excavated area abutting the Western Wall into an egalitarian Jewish prayer section was hotly contested by Israeli archaeologists, who said such a move would cause irreparable damage to the historic remains of the ancient city.
Katz has previously proposed other ambitious infrastructure projects, including an artificial island off the coast of the Gaza Strip that would serve as an air and seaport for the Palestinian territory, and a railway connecting Israel with Saudi Arabia and other Arab states.