A week has passed since the opening of the Yadin Tunnels to vehicle traffic in Jerusalem. The two new tunnels include four lanes, two of which lead to the Ma'ale Adumim settlement and the Dead Sea east of the city, and the other two return in the other direction towards the Binyamin settlement northeast of the holy city.

The Israeli Ministry of Transportation website stated that the opening of the new tunnels is a continuation of the “level separation” project at the French Hill intersection, which will allow continuous and fast travel to the Ma’ale Adumim settlement and the Dead Sea. It includes 4 tunnels with a length of 4.4 kilometers and a depth of about 40 meters.

The length of each tunnel - according to the ministry's website - is about 1.5 kilometers, and they were implemented by the "Moriya" company affiliated with the occupation municipality in Jerusalem and the Ministry of Transportation. The two new tunnels are added to two other tunnels that were opened in late 2023 and were named "Narkis" near the junction of Mount Scopus and the settlement of (French Hill), so that they lead to the settlements of "Neve Yaakov" and "Pisgat Ze'ev", and the length of each of them is 700 meters.

 Demographics Decision 
Commenting on the completion of the project, Israeli Minister of Transportation Miri Regev said, “Our commitment to the development and prosperity of Jerusalem, the eternal city and capital of Israel, is expressed in many investments. The ministry is working to strengthen the traffic system and connectivity between Jerusalem and its neighbors to the east, Ma’ale Adumim and Binyamin.”

While the Ministry's Director General, Moshe Ben Zaken, said, "Our office is working to improve the entrances to Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the people of Israel, with the aim of making it easier for the diverse communities that come to Jerusalem every day for all of life's needs."

Suhail Khalili, director of the Settlement Monitoring Unit at the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem (ARIJ), told Al Jazeera Net that the new tunnels, in addition to the additional tunnel that was recently opened under the city of Beit Jala (south of Jerusalem), will facilitate the movement of approximately 170,000 settlers from the settlements of Gush Etzion, Ma’ale Adumim, and Givat Ze’ev towards Jerusalem, explaining that “Israel plans to annex these settlement blocs to the administrative borders of the Jerusalem municipality.”

In order for them to reach the city, they need a developed road network, and their inclusion will tip the demographic balance in the holy city in favor of the Jews at the expense of the Palestinians, whose neighborhoods located behind the separation wall are also planned to be excluded from the municipal borders, according to the researcher.

The idea of the new tunnels is in line with the general concept that the Israelis want to implement, which is to allocate road networks for Palestinians and others for Israelis to facilitate the recruitment of settlers. Moreover, the work to open more of them indicates - according to the researcher at the ARIJ Center - the volume of construction that will be added to the settlements and the industrial areas near them.


Pillars of the settlement project 
The length of the bypass roads (outside the cities) in the West Bank - which were built for the settlers, but some of which are still used by the Palestinians - is more than 960 kilometers. Here, the researcher confirms that the settlement project is based on three basic pillars: building settlements, bypass roads, and industrial zones.

He added: When the settlements were built, the project was not successful, so they thought of building industrial areas near them in order to bring settlers to work, and thus the need arose to create a wide and easy road network.

For his part, map and settlement expert Khalil al-Tafakji told Al Jazeera Net that the tunnels being built inside Jerusalem have a set of strategic goals, “which are to connect and integrate East and West Jerusalem, and to connect the Israeli settlements that are located outside the municipal borders with the city.”

In other words, the Israeli side is expanding the borders of the Jerusalem municipality from the current Jerusalem, which is equivalent to 1.2% of the area of the West Bank, to 10% of its area, by annexing settlement blocs and creating a network of streets and tunnels, according to the Jerusalem expert.

He added, "For example, the cost of constructing the Ring Road, or what is known as the American Road, is 500 million dollars. To construct it, 1,070 dunams (one dunam equals one thousand square meters) of land from four Jerusalem towns were confiscated. The road and the settlements have tightly encircled these towns, limited their expansion, and fragmented their geographical connection."

Al-Tafkji touched on the tunnel that will be opened in the Qalandia checkpoint area, saying that it will connect the settlements northeast of Jerusalem to the city, and thus impose a fait accompli, establish a special infrastructure for the settlements, facilitate the movement of settlers, confiscate lands, besiege Palestinian villages, and merge the two parts of the city, so that the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital will become impossible.
Roads surrounding Jerusalem

In turn, the director of the Jerusalem Legal Aid Center, Rami Saleh, spoke about this issue from a legal perspective, saying, “We must remember that when the city is linked to the settlements, it is simultaneously isolated from its Palestinian surroundings,” explaining that “any Palestinian who wishes to visit Jerusalem must obtain approval from the Israeli military authorities.”

Because obtaining an entry permit to Jerusalem has become impossible during the war, Palestinians have begun to sneak into their holy city, and most of the time they are arrested.

Saleh added in his interview with Al Jazeera Net, "Estimates indicate that there are hundreds of Palestinians who enter Jerusalem daily without obtaining a permit and that dozens are arrested. Ironically, the settler enters with ease without a checkpoint, and the Palestinian must sneak into his city and then be arrested."

The Jerusalemite human rights activist concluded by saying that there are 10 road sections surrounding Jerusalem, with a length of 96 kilometers, and that the Israeli authorities have worked on building them over the past 25 years, claiming that the goal is to facilitate traffic to and from the city, “but for us as Jerusalemites, they connect the settlements surrounding the city to its center, and isolate the eastern neighborhoods occupied in 1967 from the Palestinian fabric.”


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