"It's certainly not a block of flats," agrees Adnan, the genial Palestinian who lives across the road, staring at the giant construction site that blocks his view and subjects him to a daily soundtrack of hammering and drilling. "I think perhaps I should sell my house and move. It's going to get quite busy around here."
Adnan has probably left it a little late. For between two years (according to Adnan) and four years (according to other sources), a huge team of builders has been constructing the grandiose complex in the Palestinian suburb of Abu Dis, just off one of the main exit roads to the West Bank out of East Jerusalem. And yet until this week nobody, neighbours included, seemed to be much interested in what purpose the building was to serve.
Now, though, the word is out. With its twin elevated sections at one end, its squat assembly hall at the other, its underground carpark and its vantage point overlooking Jerusalem, the fast-growing complex is intended to house the Palestinian parliament, replacing the current, less prestigious facilities in the West Bank city of Ramallah to the north.
Officially, Palestinian leaders deny this. The Palestinian peace negotiator, Mr Saeb Erekat, insists instead that the complex will play home to various "departments of the Palestinian Authority". Israeli politicians, though, are adamant about the parliamentary purpose, and Palestinian sources privately confirm as much.
The denials, the sources explain, are intended to defuse potential anger among Palestinians over the location of the building on the very edge of Jerusalem, symbolising, perhaps, Palestinian capitulation to the Israeli government's demand for complete Israeli sovereignty within city limits.
In fact, there is considerable confusion as to whether the new building, set for completion early next year, sits inside, outside or directly on the border between Jerusalem and the West Bank.
A 1994 Israeli army map puts it just inside the holy city's municipal borders. But Jerusalem City Hall officials, not usually known for seeking to minimise the area under their rule, say it lies in the West Bank in a sector classified as Area B, where Israel maintains "overall security control," but the administration of the Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat, has day-to-day authority and can build as it wishes.
The confusion is typical and potentially extremely useful.
In the final months of Israel's Labour government, before Mr Benjamin Netanyahu came to power in 1996, the Israelis and Palestinians held secret talks aimed at resolving the two sides' conflicting claims to Jerusalem.
Mr Yossi Beilin, then a Labour cabinet minister, reached a tentative agreement with Mr Arafat's deputy, Mr Abu Mazen, under which Palestinian government institutions could be centred in Abu Dis, an area that the Palestinians could claim was part of Jerusalem, and the Israelis could insist was not. Today, with peace hopes in tatters and both sides increasingly inflexible, the Palestinian leadership can hardly admit to what might have seemed three or four years ago to be a reasonable compromise, but might now be perceived as an unwarranted concession.
And so, while the cement trucks make their dusty way to the site past the Abu Dis grocery stores and the entrance to the Al-Quds (Jerusalem) University, it is the Palestinians who are denying the building's true nature and the Israelis who are celebrating it. If peace prospects continue to recede, the Palestinian parliament will probably remain in Ramallah, and Mr Erekat's PA "departments" will indeed take up residency.
Only if the process is resuscitated, and steered toward a permanent peace accord, will the lavish, golden stone-faced complex in Abu Dis resonate to the sound of feisty Palestinian parliamentary debate.
AFP adds: The Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, defended himself yesterday against charges that his policies were killing the peace process, saying peace "collapsed" two years ago due to Palestinian terrorism.
Two years ago "we had no peace. We had a collapse of the basic deal of Oslo [self-rule accords]. We gave the Palestinians territory and they did not fight terrorists," Mr Netanyahu told a meeting of ambassadors to Israel.
"The deal has still not been kept. The promised dismantling of terrorist groups has not been kept," he said.