Israel has been engaged for five years in the planning and, already, in the construction of road infrastructure on a massive scale in the West Bank, for the benefit of the settlements. Never had such an acceleration of public works been observed in the Palestinian territories conquered and occupied in 1967, since the construction sites opened in the wake of the Oslo peace accords in the 1990s. It is the conclusion of a important investigation, published Monday, December 7 by the Israeli non-governmental organization Breaking the Silence, composed of veterans of the army, which documents the abuses committed by the occupiers of the West Bank.
Such works are part of the long term, in “Root[ant] control of Israel over the occupied territories, by pursuing “suburbanization” Israeli settlements and fragmenting the Palestinian territory, [ils] contributes[nt] to cement the reality of a state with unequal rights ” between Israelis and Palestinians, which extends from the Jordan to the Mediterranean, estimates the NGO.
To draw up a coherent picture of these projects, divided between several ministries, the army which controls the territories, and various planning bodies, Breaking the Silence was based in particular on the minutes of meetings of a parliamentary sub-committee on civil and security affairs in “Judea and Samaria”, the West Bank name used by the Jewish state. A body linked to the Knesset’s monitoring of foreign and defense affairs.
Palestinian territories crisscrossed by roads
Certainly, many settlers have expressed their disappointment at the freezing, in July, of the project to annex part of the West Bank, promised by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But it emerges from this report that they cannot consider themselves forgotten by the State. For five years, according to Breaking the Silence, Israel has credibly initiated or planned the construction of 107 kilometers of new roads and the renovation or doubling of 230 kilometers of existing tracks.
On November 10, the Minister of Transport, Miri Regev, presented representatives of the settlements with a road development plan for “Judea and Samaria” by 2045, which gives consistency to these projects, as well as to others of longer term. Sunday December 6, Mme Regev underlined their logic again, announcing a budget extension for four routes: “We apply de facto sovereignty [d’Israël en Cisjordanie] “, she said.
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