The Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement on Jan. 8 rejected the setting up of a memorial for the Indian freedom fighter Mahatma Gandhi in Jerusalem. Dimitri Diliani, a Jerusalem-based member of Fatah’s Revolutionary Council, said that setting up the memorial “aims at confiscating lands from Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem.” “Our objection is not against the great Indian national leader but against the Israeli intentions behind the move,” Diliani said. “The Palestinian people respect the late Indian leader for leading his people to independence by nonviolent resistance,” the Fatah official said.
Diliani said that Israel will confiscate Palestinian-owned lands in the Jabal Al-Mukaber neighbourhood to set up the memorial. Jerusalem Municipality councilman Meir Margalit, the initiator of the idea and fundraiser, said that the municipality will set up a statue and a mediation centre in an area between Jabal Al-Mukaber and Jewish neighbourhood of Armon Ha Netsiv “to illustrate how to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict through peaceful means, as Gandhi would have wished.”