TEL AVIV: Caretaker Defence Minister Naftali Bennett on Monday approved the construction of a “Palestinians only” road that would connect the northern and southern West Bank.
The “sovereignty road,” he said, would allow Israel to build in a highly controversial area between Jerusalem and a settlement bloc directly to the east of the disputed city.
The new road would allow Palestinian vehicles to pass through the Adumim settlement bloc along a wall resembling a tunnel, connecting Palestinian villages south and north of Jerusalem. The “separate” road for Palestinians would “prevent friction” with Jewish settlers, the right-wing Bennett said.
The project, now approved at the level of the defence minister, has been in the pipelines for about a decade. Early last year, the opening of a northern section of the road drew international criticism.
Israel’s Peace Now settlement watchdog called the project “bad news.” The planned road would “shut down the possibility of developing available. Palestinian state,” it said. “There is no desire here to improve Palestinian transport, only to expand settlements.”
A thin road connecting Bethlehem to the south of Jerusalem and Ramallah to the north may create “transportational contiguity,” but not “territorial contiguity.”
Israel captured the West Bank, including East Jerusalem with its historic, walled Old City containing Muslim, Jewish, Christian and Armenian quarters, from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War.
Since then, Israel has built a belt of settlements around the disputed city. Most of the international community regards these settlements as illegal. Israel disputes this. — dpa
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