The Israeli occupation municipality’s planning and building committee in Occupied Jerusalem announced its intent to annex Palestinian land in the south of the occupied city of Jerusalem to build public buildings and roads and expand the illegal settlement of Givat Hamatos.
Jerusalem mayor Adnan Ghaith said that this new Israeli plan is aimed at severing the geographical contiguity between Jerusalem and Bethlehem and isolating the holy city.
Ghaith warned that this Israeli occupation plan would encircle Jerusalem with a belt of settlements, annex some of its lands to the municipality’s territorial boundaries and remove certain Palestinian villages and neighborhoods from these new Jerusalemite borders in order to create a change in the demographic and geographic structure of the holy city.
“The Israeli occupation authority is seeking to impose a new fait accompli, without any respect for the international law and the international community. This new settlement plan would happen simultaneously with another major one in the Qalandia area, where roads would be built to connect settlements with each other.” the mayor said.
In the same context, the Hebrew Walla news website affirmed that the planning and building committee in Jerusalem approved the annexation of a large area of Palestinian land in order to build homes, facilities and roads in Givat Hamatos settlement.
According to Walla news, the plan includes the construction of housing units, commercial facilities and other structures in the settlement.
The Israeli District Planning and Building Committee had previously approved the construction of 2,600 settlement units in the area in 2014, before the plan was frozen due to international pressure.
Haaretz website said that the Israeli government plans to build thousands of housing units in different areas of Jerusalem in an attempt to bring about a major change on the geopolitical map of the region and strengthen the settler presence in the holy city.
“Givat Hamatos, E1, Atarot and Pisgat Ze’ev – these are all areas in or around Jerusalem that lie beyond Israel’s 1967 borders, where the state is currently advancing extensive building plans for Jews,” Haaretz said.
“The Biden administration is so far refraining, at least publicly, from exert pressure on Israel to freeze these construction plans. Given the composition of Israel’s government, such pressure could turn into a political crisis,” the newspaper added.
“The Givat Hamatos and E1 area were always a red zone for the US and the international community. The two plans are considered particularly problematic since Givat Hamatos would completely cut off the large village of Beit Safafa from Palestinian East Jerusalem, surrounding it with Jewish neighborhoods,” it pointed out.
“Construction in E1 would split the West Bank into two parts, impeding traffic between the northern and southern parts of the West Bank. For the international community, these would constitute a nail in the coffin of the two-state solution,” it said.