Israel is Confiscating More of East Jerusalem

Israel is confiscating more portions of Palestinian land east of East Jerusalem

On 24th of September 2007, the Israeli military issued an order to confiscate more than 1,100 dunums of Palestinian land in the Jerusalem Governorate for the construction of a new road.

The road reinforces and facilitates Israel’s colony expansion east of East Jerusalem; particularly the road isolates Palestinian East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank. It will serve to eventually push Palestinian traffic further to the east and away from East Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, Israel continues to construct a separate highway network to link Israeli colonies on both sides of the Wall with each other and with Israel. Such transportation networks serve to facilitate colony expansion throughout the Israeli-occupied West Bank while limiting any future Palestinian development.

This Israeli move is destructive to all the efforts led by the international community to revive the peace process and to realize the two-state solution by having a viable contiguous Palestinian state.

Such unilateral Israeli measures demonstrate yet again Israeli intentions to consolidate and expand Jewish colonies in East Jerusalem, and effectively take Jerusalem off the negotiating table. This construction is on-going in Jerusalem’s east, despite repeated assurances from the Israeli government to the United States that it would not construct there. These colony activities in and around East Jerusalem, mean that time for ‘two-state solution’ may soon run out.

The Metropolitan East Jerusalem area, which extends from Ramallah in the north to Bethlehem in the south, historically accounted for 35% of the Palestinian economy in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip combined. By fragmenting that metropolitan unit and separating East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, the Jerusalem-area Wall and colonies mean that there will be no viable Palestinian state, and hence no viable two-state solution.