New site could defuse tensions over Gehry's Jewish museum

It is understood the recently elected mayor of Jerusalem has offered a new site to the group building the $150m (£104m) museum in the hope that it will reconsider its plans.

The Museum of Tolerance is the brainchild of Jewish group the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

It is proposed to be built on a Muslim cemetery that the Israeli authorities argue is no longer in use but Palestinian lobbyists insist is still sacred.

A coalition of UK architects including Will Alsop, Eva Jiricna and Charles Jencks, led by lobby group Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine, has joined calls for the museum to be scrapped. Jencks said: “Frank is one of my closest friends, but I don’t think this should be built. You can’t build a museum for tolerance that doesn’t obey the international understanding of what tolerance is.”

Nir Barkat was voted mayor of Jerusalem in November last year and is understood to be keen to defuse the row, which has created potentially violent tensions in Jerusalem.