Khalil al-Tafakji the head of the Mapping Department at the Arab Studies Society in Occupied Jerusalem said on Sunday that the new settlement intended to be built in the occupied West Bank is not the first of its kind in 20 years affirming that the settlement construction has not stopped one day in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem since 1967.
In an interview with the PIC Tafakji said that the Israeli government’s settlement activity is based on deception. He affirmed that the Israeli approach is based on annexing new neighborhoods to the settlements. For example Gilo A Gilo B and Gilo C neighborhoods were annexed to Gilo settlement south of occupied Jerusalem. These additions are larger than the settlement itself he noted.
Tafakji touched on a serious issue regarding the decision issued by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government last Thursday stipulating “If we are not able to build inside settlements we will build around them or in their vital security area.” He explained that building inside the settlements means seizing 1.6% of the territories occupied in 1967 while building around them means seizing 6% warning that the vital security areas of the settlements represent 60% of the occupied Palestinian territories.
He continued that looking at the settlement concatenation in the West Bank one can notice that the largest settlement blocs are located in Ariel bloc in the north of the West Bank and Shilo which is located on the lands of Turmusa’ya and Jalloud. He affirmed that this concatenation unquestionably aims to separate the northern part of the West Bank from its southern one.
Tafakji pointed out that the current settlement expansion is not spontaneous but rather comes within a deliberate program aimed at preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state that has geographic and demographic ties.
The Palestinian expert emphasized that the Israeli government’s resolution which came one day after the Arab summit in Jordan delivers a message to Arabs and Palestinians that the settlement project will continue despite the summit’s results and resolutions and despite the UN Security Council resolution No. 2334.
Tafakji refuted the Israeli authorities’ claims that the lands on which the new settlement is going to be built are “state lands” and described them as null and void adding that building the new settlement on these lands means completing the settlement concatenation stretching from the Palestinian coast in the west to the Jordan Valley in the east.
Tafakji warned that the settlement project is being expanded in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem according to a program drawn in 1979 to transfer a million settlers to the Palestinian territories until 2020.
The project will be completed in 2050 by building two settlement blocs. The first is a huge bloc called E1 and it will be linked to the largest settlement bloc Ma’ale Adumim which extends to the Dead Sea. The second will be built on the lands of Jerusalem airport to the north of the occupied city to complete the settlement circle based on a project called “Greater Jerusalem” that will gulp most of the West Bank lands.
