Israeli authorities are expected to advance plans for about 9,000 new housing units in an illegal settlement on the site of the abandoned Qalandiya airport in occupied East Jerusalem, a move critics say is intended to fragment Palestinian land and foreclose a contiguous Palestinian state.
The proposed Atarot neighbourhood in northern East Jerusalem, likened to the E1 plan, is set to be discussed and have its outlines approved by the District Planning and Building Committee, according to the Israeli organisation Peace Now.
Peace Now says the settlement would be built within a densely populated Palestinian urban area stretching from Ramallah and Kafr Aqab through the Qalandiya refugee camp, ar-Ram, Beit Hanina and Bir Nabala.
The project would create an Israeli enclave amid hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, blocking development in a strategic area and further undermine the prospects for a sovereign Palestinian state.
Peace Now warned that the plan would sever East Jerusalem from surrounding Palestinian areas and in practice prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Critics describe the initiative as a far-right push by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to establish an ultra-Orthodox mega-settlement across the Green Line north of Jerusalem, involving housing units that would ultimately be unsustainable and contested.
Although the plan was initiated in early 2020 and quickly completed its bureaucratic preparations, it faced objections from Israel’s Environmental Protection and Health ministries and opposition from the administration of former US President Barack Obama, and it still requires further government approval before tenders can proceed.
Most of the land is designated by Israel as state land, easing implementation, as Israel accelerates settlement expansion and annexation efforts in the occupied West Bank alongside its ongoing war on Gaza that began in October 2023 and has reportedly killed more than 70,000 people.
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