The National Office for Defending the Land and Resisting Settlements said that the so-called "five-year plan for the development of East Jerusalem for the years 2024-2028", which was approved by the Israeli government last Sunday, aims to serve the efforts of Judaization and Israeliization and deepening settlement in East Jerusalem.

This plan was accompanied by the Israeli Minister of Jerusalem and Traditions, Meir Porush, at a value of three billion two hundred million shekels, in addition to a budget of half a billion shekels for the project of the so-called "Holy Basin" for Judaization and settlement strengthening in Old Jerusalem.

This five-year plan is the result of work that lasted a year and a half, in which teams from the Ministry of Jerusalem Affairs, the Jerusalem Municipality, the "Governmental Company for the Development of East Jerusalem" and the right-wing and extremist "Jerusalem Institute for Policy Studies" participated.

The occupation government had discussed that plan in previous meetings, specifically in the meeting it held in tunnels under the Al-Buraq Wall yard last May on the occasion of the occupation of East Jerusalem and the so-called 56th anniversary of the "unification of Jerusalem". It took a number of decisions to finance large-scale settlement projects and settlement associations in Occupied Jerusalem, while the five-year plan was approved "within a principled framework", it was not without many reservations made by the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Settlement in the Ministry of Defense Bezalel Smotrich and the Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir and other ministers of a government that is the most extremist and racist in the history of the occupying state.

Porush claimed that the plan aims to reduce the social and economic disparities between the two parts of the city, describing it as responding to about twenty issues that require urgent attention, especially with regard to education and infrastructure, claiming that his government invests in the Arab population because it is the most humane thing.

As for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he claimed that he would not forget Jerusalem, the capital, even for a single minute, and affirmed his government's commitment to helping all its residents, noting that the sums that will be employed in civil services in the east of the city are the largest in history.

The new plan came to replace a previous five-year plan that expires at the end of this year, and its budget was reduced twice, from 4 to 2.1 billion shekels. One of its most prominent results was the deepening of the differences between East and West Jerusalem instead of reducing them.

When the draft plan was circulated to the ministries before it was presented to the government meeting and its news was leaked, it was met with a protest from a number of ministries that were not aware of the existence of the plan in the first place, and claimed that the plan would lead to a reduction in their budgets without prior coordination.

Indeed, the plan will depend on its financing on the contribution of a number of ministries and on the contribution of the occupation municipality in Jerusalem, distributed by about 2.450 billion shekels from the ministries’ budgets, and about 750 million shekels from the Jerusalem municipality, the innovation authority, the electricity company, and others.

This clearly means that the approved budget is not fixed and is subject to considerations related to the work of those ministries and the work of the municipality, which is what actually happened with the previous five-year plan, whose ceiling decreased by half in the context of the years of its operation.

What is noteworthy here is the contribution of the occupation municipality throughout the years of the plan. The occupation municipality approved its annual budget for the year 2023 with a value of 8.42 billion shekels. Assuming that the municipality’s budget will remain the same for the next five years, which is an illogical assumption, the total of these budgets will range Between 42 billion and 45 billion shekels, of which about 750 million shekels were allocated to East Jerusalem, according to the plan, in partnership with the Innovations Authority, the Electricity Company, and others, which is a meager and absurd number just like the meager and absurd number that the plan singled out for the health sector, at a time when the Palestinians make up about 35% of the population In the city and they pay according to official data 30% of the value of taxes collected by the occupation municipality, the municipality does not spend on the services provided to them only 8% of the total services provided by the municipality to the public.

According to the government’s decision, the five-year plan includes investments in various sectors, including the education sector, at a value of 800 shekels, whose main function is the Israelization and Judaization of educational curricula, the employment sector in economic development, at a value of 506 million shekels, to integrate Palestinians into the Israeli labor market, and the infrastructure sector, at a value of 833 million shekels, for urban integration between the two parts of the city in order to enhance settlement encroachment, the legal planning sector and the design of public buildings at a value of 132 million shekels to complete the theft and looting of lands and register them as absent property or in the names of Jewish owners and settlement associations, and the resident services sector at a value of 900 million shekels to expand community control over the Jerusalemites, in addition to control Security through increasing the number of police and municipal inspectors, adding surveillance cameras, and establishing other police stations in occupied Jerusalem.

As for the commitment of the Israeli government in this plan to build 2,000 apartments for the Palestinians in occupied Jerusalem annually, it is an old and false commitment by all standards, especially taking into account the previous five-year plan and the non-stop policy of demolishing Palestinian homes and facilities.

Not only that, but the so-called plan for the development of East Jerusalem neglected what is more dangerous in the context of the policy of Judaization, Israelization and silent displacement, through the expansion of settlement activities as a parallel plan, as the first half of this year recorded records in terms of the number of settlement units that were promoted It has, in the last stage of the process of approving the construction of settlement projects, by building 12,855 settlement units in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, of which 7,082 new settlement units.

Beyond that, the Israeli government approved the allocation of 230 million shekels to complete the American road, or what is known as the eastern ring road in occupied East Jerusalem, as part of the transportation projects included in the five-year plan, and withheld from public opinion that this road robs hundreds of dunams of the lands of Al-Eizariya and Al-Sawahra. , Abu Dis, Al-Tur, Sheikh Saad, Jabal Al-Mukaber, and Sur Baher, and it is designed to connect the Israeli settlements in the south of the city with the "Ma'ale Adumim" settlement east of Jerusalem and has nothing to do with the development of East Jerusalem or the service of the Palestinian citizens of the city.

In addition, it was revealed that the Israeli company "Donna" won the tender for building a new settlement project in the "Benoy" complex in the south, opposite Deir Crimzan, between Al-Walaja and Beit Jala, as part of a more comprehensive project to expand settlement in southern Jerusalem. The company said that the towers will be built from 18 to 22 floors, in addition to a commercial and service complex, playgrounds and gardens.

The urban planner, Engineer Arit Guttenberg, said that she has been working for two years with the board of directors of the "Ramat Shlomo" settlement in order to develop and expand the western area of the settlement, and that an understanding and agreement has been reached with the Special Committee for Building and Settlement Development in the District Committee to add about 134 settlement units in the foothills of Shuafat. In a manner commensurate with the topographical nature of the elevated area along the bypass road 443 Jerusalem, where intensive construction is taking place in this settlement, whose population now exceeds 30,000 settlers.

The plans of Judaization and Israelization and the deepening of settlement in East Jerusalem go hand in hand with vast and unprecedented settlement plans in the rest of the West Bank governorates, as settler leaders, especially in the northern West Bank, see in the current Israeli government their precious opportunity, prompted by the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Settlement in the Ministry of Defense in Bezalel Smotrich and the Settlement Council (Yesha). The settler leaders of the so-called "Samaria Settlement Council" led by Yossi Dagan, one of the hardened fascist and neo-Nazi settlers, implemented a plan to increase the number of settlers in the northern West Bank from about 170,000 to about one million settlers.

For this purpose, they agreed in their annual conference about a year ago to crystallize a plan based on the return to the settlements vacated by former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in the disengagement plan from the Gaza Strip and the northern West Bank, and its circle expands to include the governorates of Nablus, Tulkarem, Qalqilya, and Salfit, as a field vital to an unprecedented settlement expansion.

The regional council entrusted the task of planning this project to engineers and professional consultants with specialization in urban engineering, who worked for a whole year to complete the plan that Dagan carried to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu for approval in the plans of his extreme right-wing government.

This plan is based on the return to the settlements of "Homesh", "Ghanim", "Sanor" and "Kadeem" in the Jenin governorate, and the expansion of the "Itamar" settlements in the Nablus governorate, and "Tzufim" in the Qalqilya governorate, and "Saleit" and " Avnei Hefetz" in the Tulkarm governorate, as well as the construction of two new settlements similar to "Modi'in" in the extension of Kafr Qassem towards Salfit. The occupying power, along with hospitals, medical and cultural centers to serve the new settlements.

At the same time, Minister Smotrich is preparing a plan to legalize 155 random settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank, using his control over the Ministry of Finance and Civil Administration to implement his plan. The Smotrich plan maps all of the "illegal" Israeli outposts in the West Bank to facilitate the eventual legalization of all of them.

Smotrich began his plan with about 14 illegal settlement outposts, five of which are classified as pastoral settlements, which are, in fact, outposts that house terrorist settlers in the first place, based on the displacement of a number of Bedouin communities such as Ain Samia, Al-Qaboun, Al-Marj, Al-Baqaa, and Ras Al-Tin.

The Smotrich plan currently focuses on outposts in the northern and central West Bank, before moving to the Hebron areas (Masafer Yatta), and the Jordan Valley, where the Palestinian Badia is. The plan includes allocating hundreds of millions of shekels to finance the outposts, in addition to building access roads and connecting them to electricity and water networks. .

Smotrich's plan meets with opposition from levels in the occupation army and the Israeli General Security Service (Shin Bet), which demanded the formation of a joint team of the concerned government ministries to examine the issue and its possible repercussions.

In the same way that the legalization of unauthorized outposts is circumvented according to the occupation law, the occupation government intends to announce the legalization of two new settlements in the Jerusalem wilderness, namely “Nofei Furat” and “Alon”, and the allocation of hundreds of millions of shekels for them, and the two settlements are currently receiving funding From the "Kfar Adumim" settlement under the pretext that they are from its neighborhoods and thus granting it a new separate infrastructure, in addition to service projects such as kindergartens, clinics and schools.

The government coalition is pushing for a decision that allows for the actual recognition of settlements that do not have an independent official status, and even a direct transfer of budgets to these settlements, and this approach has already been approved by the Israeli Ministry of Justice, and it will be presented for approval by the occupation government in the coming weeks. However, the "Novi Firat" and "Alon" settlements, which are officially considered part of the "Kfar Adumim" settlement, can directly obtain government budgets because they are already operating as independent settlements. Yuval as neighborhoods of the "Eli" settlement between the cities of Nablus and Ramallah.

In light of the anxiety among the settlers, prompting them to demonstrate and seek help and protection from the occupying state, after a series of attacks carried out by Palestinian resistance fighters in recent weeks, Yoav Gallant, the Minister of the Occupation Army, held a meeting with the heads of settlement councils in the West Bank, in which Yehuda Fox, Commander of the Central Region (West Bank), participated. ), after an assessment of the security situation conducted by Gallant with senior officials in his ministry, in which he criticized attacks by settlers on army officers.

In that meeting, the Minister of the Army assured the settler leaders, "It is forbidden to attack the officers, and if you find criticism, attack me," explaining, "I do not mean you, but the Knesset members who attack the army, including members of my (Likud) party."

In that meeting, Gallant expressed the commitment of the occupation army to support settlements, enhance security, improve infrastructure, and secure movement on the streets and roads used by settlers.

In the context, it was recently revealed that a secret meeting was held last February, with the participation of representatives of the Israeli army, the Shin Bet, the Mossad, the National Security Council and other parties, about the protests opposing the judicial amendments led by the Israeli government and the role of the Israeli Supreme Court in providing cover and legal protection for the occupation. Settlement and war crimes against the Palestinians.

The conferees stressed that passing the judicial amendments would weaken its role as an independent and powerful court, and quoted a senior security official who participated in those deliberations as saying, “The Supreme Court in Israel enjoys a prestigious international status, and if loyal judges are appointed, its status will be damaged as a protective shield.” In this case, the workers building the apartheid wall and the soldiers and army officers working in the occupied territories will risk being charged with war crimes in the International Criminal Court under international law.