RAMALLAH, The Israeli occupation authorities plan to implement a new settlement project on land that was part of the pre-June, 1967, Jerusalem airport at Qalandia in the north of the city, thus completely isolating Jerusalem from its Palestinian surroundings.

The project will be implemented in December 2021.

According to Peace Now, the Israeli anti-settlement movement, the plan (no. 764936), which was prepared by the Ministry of Housing, is for 9,000 housing units in the Jerusalem Airport territory, between the Palestinian neighborhoods of Kfar Aqab, Qalandia, and A-Ram south to Ramallah.

“This is a very dangerous plan which might bring a dangerous blow to the two-state solution. The planned neighborhood is at the heart of the urban territorial Palestinian continuity between Ramallah and East Jerusalem, and thus prevent the possibility of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. The government must remove the plan from the agenda immediately and shelve it,” it said.

“The plan is at the heart of the urban territorial Palestinian continuity starting in Ramallah, through Kfar Aqab and Qalanadia, to Beit Hanina and Shuafat where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians live. The plan was meant to sever the Palestinian continuity and become an Israeli enclave which would prevent Palestinian development of the most central and important metropolin in the future Palestinian state, the Jerusalem Ramallah- Bethelehm metropolin.

“Founding an Israeli neighborhood ranging thousands of housing units, which means tens of thousands of Israelis, would make any future two-state-based agreement difficult due to the lack of Palestinian continuity and harming the possibility to found a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem,” said Peace Now.

If this plan is approved and built, this will be the first new settlement in East Jerusalem since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government built the Har Homa settlement in 1997, it said.

Head of the Palestinian Authority’s Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission, Waleed Assaf, slammed this Israeli plan as a very dangerous, questioning the US if it will allow this colonial settlement to be built, and what would that mean for Joe Biden’s administration and its role in the peace process. Did the two-state solution end? he asked.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency