JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israel's attorney general has asked its Jerusalem city council to implement a 2007 court order evicting Jewish settlers from a building in East Jerusalem, the justice ministry said Wednesday.
Ministry spokesman Moshe Cohen said Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein had written to its municipality and its city police over repeated delays in carrying out the eviction order.
"He told them there is no alternative and asked them to implement the order," Cohen told Agence France-Presse.
Right-wing Mayor Nir Barkat has balked at carrying out the order against the illegally built seven-story settler home while he is being pressed to freeze demolition orders on about 200 Palestinian homes built without permits in the same Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan.
On Tuesday, he said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had prevented city authorities from demolishing houses in annexed East Jerusalem in recent months.
"At the moment, the prime minister's bureau and police are not permitting the demolition of homes," Barkat's spokesman quoted him as saying.
Netanyahu's office has not commented on Barkat's remarks, which came as the premier sought a way to revive peace talks with the Palestinians, which broke down over Israeli settlement construction.
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