The Israeli occupation sets up apartheid roads in occupied Al-Quds to isolate it from the rest of the West Bank

The Palestinian Liberation Organization’s (PLO) National Bureau for Defending the Land and Resisting Settlements said in its weekly report that the Israeli occupation authorities continue to set up apartheid roads in occupied Al-Quds in order to separate the city from the rest of the West Bank cities and towns and to implement the occupation’s colonialist annexation schemes.

The occupation authorities announced a new plan to establish an apartheid road through which Palestinians are not allowed to pass and that aims at establishing a link between a settlement that was built on the land of Al-Za’im town in the east of occupied Al-Quds, and Al-Quds’s western side as well as the towns of Anata, Hizma, and Al-Ram in the northeast of the city, said the report.

 This plan threatens to close the northern entrance of the town of Al-Eizariya by the Apartheid Wall, which means that the Palestinians will not be able to reach it through this entrance and will be forced to go through a tunnel that extends from the town of Al-Za’im to Abu Dis and Al-Eizariya areas, the report explained.

It made it clear that the plan links the settlements built on occupied Al-Quds lands, but threatens of separating the West Bank’s southern part from its center, thereby eliminating any possibility to establish an independent Palestinian state with Al-Quds as its capital.

The report went on to say that the occupation authorities revealed a plan to establish 530 new settlement units in the southwest and north of occupied Al-Quds and another plan to establish 800 new settlement units to expand the settlements that have been already established in the cities of Al-Quds, Nablus, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Qalqilya and Jenin.

Moreover, the report said that the occupation forces demolished two houses in Silwan and Beit Hanina towns in occupied Al-Quds. They also destroyed an agricultural facility to the north of Bethlehem and delivered notifications about demolishing houses and facilities in Qalqilya and Khirbet Yerza in the northern Jordan valley.

The occupation forces also continued to raze wide areas of Palestinian lands in Wadi Al-Rababa neighborhood of Silwan as well as hundreds of dunums in Broqin and Kafr Al-Deek, to the west of Salfit with the aim of expanding settlement activities, the report also said.

It also pointed out that the Israeli settlers went on with their attacks on the cities and towns of the West Bank under the protection of the occupation forces.  They uprooted 190 olive trees in the villages of Qasra and Jaloud in Nablus and dozens of fruit trees in the town of Beit Ummar, north of Al-Khalil city. They also stormed towns in Nablus and Ramallah and attacked Palestinians’ houses and properties and razed agricultural lands in the towns of Aqraba and Jinabus, to south of Nablus, and blocked the Qalqilya-Nablus road prevent the Palestinians from passing through it.

Hamda Mustafa