JERUSALEM - The Israeli government has approved a Jewish group’s plan to build a museum over a centuries-old Muslim graveyard in Jerusalem, an official confirmed yesterday, in the final go-ahead for a project delayed for years by Muslim opposition.

The museum, which is meant to promote coexistence, is a project of a US-based Jewish group, the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Israel’s Interior Ministry granted a building permit on Tuesday and construction can begin immediately, said Efrat Orbach, a spokeswoman.

Although permits are usually granted by a municipality, authority was transferred to the government ministry due to the sensitivity of this case, Orbach said yesterday.

Muslims sought to stop the project on religious grounds, saying the old graves must not be desecrated. Israelis charged that with their opposition to the museum, certain Muslim groups were trying to establish a political foothold in the Jewish part of Jerusalem.

The project is located in west Jerusalem, which is populated mostly by Jews and has been under Israeli control since the state was founded in 1948, unlike east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war but claimed by Palestinians as their capital.

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