The National Bureau for Defending Land and Resisting Settlements affirmed that the occupation is continuing its policy of annexation and perpetuating the apartheid system, taking advantage of the opportunities arising from regional and international conditions.

In this context, he referred to the agreement between the Israeli Minister of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich, and the Minister of Transport, Miri Regev, to allocate billions of shekels in order to develop roads and infrastructure for settlements in the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem, and include them in the general budget, as the Israeli government allocated about (4 billion) Shekels for this purpose within the general budget, in addition to the 160 million shekels that were included in the budget of the Ministry of Transportation, provided that these budgets are allocated to infrastructure projects and road development for settlements in the occupied West Bank.

These amounts mean that 25.69% of the budget allocated for "implementing the strategic plan" for building roads in Israel has been allocated and allocated for infrastructure projects and settlement roads in the West Bank, which means that about 4 billion shekels are allocated out of the 13.687 billion shekels allocated for infrastructure projects in Israel. .

The allocated budgets include allocating half a billion shekels to expand the settlement road from the junction of the "Ariel" settlement to the "Taffouh" settlement in the Salfit governorate. It was also decided to allocate 150 million shekels to develop the road network near the "Alfi Menashe" settlement, south of Qalqilya, and to allocate a budget of 200 million shekels to build a bypass road for the hotel town, while a budget of 366 million shekels will be allocated to modernize and widen the road leading to the "Beit El" settlement. A budget of 136 million shekels will be allocated to widen the road leading to the "Beit El" settlement, and a budget of 2 billion shekels will be allocated to develop and expand settlement Road No. 60. According to the understandings, an amount of 156 million shekels was also allocated for the development of an intersection and main roads near Al-Isawiya for the benefit of the settlers, and 80 million for the expansion of the eastern bypass road in Jerusalem, which serves the settlements in the Jerusalem area until Bethlehem and Hebron, in addition to allocating a budget of 300 million shekels for the construction of a settlement road linking a settlement. Majron in the Qalandia crossing area.

At the same time, the occupation authorities, next month, will start digging the Ring Road, east of Jerusalem, which the occupation calls the "fabric of life road" or "the road to sovereignty" because it paves the way for the annexation of the "Ma'ale Adumim" settlement to Jerusalem and paves the way for the implementation of the settlement plan (E1). . The excavation works come as a prelude to paving the street, which aims to completely close the northern entrance to the town of Al-Eizariya, and divert movement towards the north of the town towards Jabal Al-Baba and the town of Al-Zaeem, to link the southern West Bank area with the Jordan Valley area and the city of Jericho on the eastern side of the West Bank. The street aims to allow Palestinians to move from the south to the north without the need to travel on the roads designated for settlers in these areas. The paving of the road will create an apartheid road system between Israelis and Palestinians, and the road is of great importance for the annexation of the Ma'ale Adumim bloc to Israel and for advancing the E1 construction plan. The establishment of a separate road network for Israelis and Palestinians will enable the security establishment to cancel the Al-Za’im checkpoint, located at the eastern entrance to Jerusalem, and move it near the east of the settlement (Kfar Adumim). Jerusalem. As for the goal of preventing the Palestinians from entering the Ma'ale Adumim bloc, it would facilitate the annexation of the lands to Israel more easily in the future. This was the essence of the position of the Mayor of Ma'ale Adumim, who spoke frankly and without diplomatic language about the real goals of the road plan, without taking into account the petition submitted to the Supreme Court by the residents of Al-Eizariya, Abu Dis, Al-Sawahra and others.

These bypass roads are considered one of the occupation tools used in implementing the policy of imposing facts on the ground and shaping the geography of the West Bank. The National Bureau had referred in previous reports to the most important and dangerous of these bypass roads, such as the Hawara bypass road (Za’tara junction), the Arroub bypass road, the Qalandia tunnel, the western Laban bypass road, the Prophet Elias bypass road, the eastern ring road, the road 60 bypass, the eastern Gush Etzion road - the Dead Sea, and others.

Within a series of successive settlement plans, which would consolidate Israeli control over more lands in East Jerusalem, and control its separation from the West Bank in all directions, the Israeli District Committee pushed plans to build 2,969 settlement units in the settlements of French Hill, "Pisgat Ze'ev" and Givat Shaked, and decided to accept all documents of the amended plan and approved each plan for filing for public review and objections. The so-called amended plan confiscates thousands of dunums of Jerusalemites' lands in the center, south, and east of the city, and it threatens the population centers present in the targeted areas. The District Planning Committee in Jerusalem also scheduled a discussion session on the objections to the Wadi Al-Jouz Business Center plan (Silicon Valley) on May 2, which is an advanced step towards its final approval, noting that the local planning committee rejected the objections and recommended approval of the plan on March 29.

At the same time, the Moshe Lion Municipality, in cooperation with the Shikon Vibinoy company, published a new plan to expand the building rights in the plots of land located within the "Givat Hamatos" settlement built on the lands of Beit Safafa in East Jerusalem. The new plan expands the building rights on these lands from 300 to 1,500 settlement units, which means severing the Palestinian geographical contiguity permanently between East Jerusalem and Bethlehem in the south, and preventing the linking of the Palestinian Beit Safafa to a future Palestinian state. The "Givat Hamatos" plan was approved a decade ago, as the settlement contains 2,610 settlement units. Tenders were published for the construction of 1,200 settlement units from the aforementioned units three years ago, but today, extensive works are underway on the ground in order to extend the infrastructure in order to prepare the ground for future Jewish construction in the settlement. The “Shikun Vibinoy” company obtained expanded building percentages in the aforementioned settlement.

In parallel, the local committee in the (western) Jerusalem municipality discussed, last week, the district committee's intention to prepare a new plan also on the lands of Beit Safafa. The scope of the plan is 400 housing units, to expand the Givat Shaked settlement at the expense of the lands of Sharafat and Beit Safafa.

The occupation authorities also decided recently to deposit a plan to build 135 new settlement units in the "Ma'alot Al-Dafna" settlement in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in occupied Jerusalem. According to the occupation decision, the plan is located on the light railway axes of the approved (green) line and the planned line (light blue), with an area of 2110 square meters. An existing 5-story building with 26 units will be demolished, and instead a new 12-story building with 135 settlement units, a synagogue, an underground parking lot for the building's residents and commerce, and a path that connects to the neighborhood's existing lane system and connects to the railroad will be constructed instead.

Also in the context, the occupation municipality approved, through the local committee for planning and building, the so-called plan to preserve the ancient ancient castle of Al-Qasr, south of the old town, which it calls (Eyal), and to reveal it to the settlers, restore it, and build a settlement complex on both sides of it. The plan is located in the complex between Hebron Bethlehem Street, south of the Old City, and the Begin Heritage Complex to the east - near the archaeological strip, the Scottish Church, and the Bible Hill. The planned area is about 513 dunums. The heads of churches and Christian denominations in the Holy Land have warned of the escalation of the extreme right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu, settlements in Jerusalem and the occupied Palestinian territories, targeting the property of Christians in Jerusalem and making life worse in the birthplace of Christianity, stressing that the Christian community is under increasing attack, targeting clergy and assaulting property. Religious activities are accelerating and daring under the government of extremists and racists.

All this is happening in and around Jerusalem. As for the rest of the West Bank regions and governorates, the settlement monster continues to advance. In this regard, the so-called "Custodian of Absentees' Property" has transferred nearly half a million dunums of land in the occupied West Bank to the Settlement Division of the Zionist Organization in order to promote settlement and seize more Palestinian lands in the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem. Last week, the Israeli Supreme Court in Jerusalem considered a petition submitted by the Israeli left-wing "Peace Now" movement, in which it demanded that the "Settlement Division" be compelled to publish in advance its decisions regarding land allocations in the West Bank for settlements and settler farms. And the “Absentee Property” law passed by the Israeli Knesset in 1950, which allows the occupation authorities to confiscate the property of Palestinian refugees who left their land and property during the Nakba of 1948, even if they were absent from it for a few hours and moved to a nearby village. This racist law constitutes an essential tool for controlling the property of Palestinian refugees and the Islamic endowment, and preventing the return of these to their lands and property that they left before, during or after the 1948 war, and allows the seizure of thousands of homes, real estate and millions of acres. This settlement division controls nearly half a million dunums of lands suitable for settlement and agriculture in the West Bank, which are allocated to settlements and outposts, as was the case in the outposts of "Amona" Migron, Mitzpe Karmim, and Givat "Holbana" located within the "Beit El" settlement. Where private land has been allocated to settlers on private Palestinian land.