By Paula Bernabéu
Al Eizariya, West Bank, Aug 20 (EFE).- In Al Eizariya, Mohammed Faroun sleeps on the floor of his shuttered café, waiting for Israeli bulldozers.
His business, like thousands of others, stands in the way of a new highway and the E1 settlement expansion east of Jerusalem, a project that will sever the West Bank in two and undermine prospects for a Palestinian state.
On Wednesday, Israel is expected to give final approval for 3,410 housing units in the E1 area, a 1,200-hectare tract east of Jerusalem attached to Maale Adumim, the West Bank’s largest settlement with 40,000 residents.
The project, illegal under international law, is seen as the spearhead of Israel’s settlement drive.
To clear the way, Israeli authorities are building a new road to divert Palestinian traffic, a project that requires demolishing Mohammed’s café and most neighboring businesses.
“We fear that at any moment they will come,” he told EFE at the Mazaj café, which he has run with his family for five years. The refrigerators behind his counter already stand empty.
If he refuses to dismantle it himself, he says, the authorities threaten to send in trucks and workers at his expense: “I’ll have to pay the bill for them to destroy my place.”
His friend, Tamer Galih, 23, nodded. His family’s home has already been reduced to rubble.
On Aug. 4, bulldozers tore down the cabin where his uncles lived, their water tanks, cars and chicken shed.
Israeli authorities justified the demolitions, saying the structures lacked building permits under military and administrative control.
The International Court of Justice considers Israel’s occupation of the West Bank illegal.
The E1 plan and the “Palestinian dream”
The new bypass road, promoted as a way to ease Palestinian traffic, will in practice bar them from the E1 corridor.
Until now, Palestinians traveling between Ramallah and Bethlehem used the road bordering Maale Adumim.
Once the bypass is complete, that road will become Israeli-only, and the military checkpoint controlling access to Jerusalem will be pushed 14 kilometers east.
“The situation on the ground will be one of annexation,” said Aviv Tatarski, a researcher at Israeli NGO Ir Amim. Expanding Maale Adumim into E1, he warned, would cement it as a suburb of Jerusalem, making it nearly impossible for Israel to dismantle and for Palestinians to accept in any two-state solution.
The move would also encircle East Jerusalem, occupied since 1967, isolating what Palestinians claim as their historic capital.
“They will talk about a Palestinian dream and we will continue building a Jewish reality,” gloated far-right Israeli minister Bezalel Smotrich after the project’s initial approval. “This reality ultimately buries the idea of a Palestinian state.”
According to Tatarski, some 3,000 Palestinians, mainly 24 Bedouin communities, could be displaced by the E1 expansion.
“When a Bedouin man loses his home, he loses more than a shack,” said Atallah Mazara, leader of the Jabal al Baba community. “He loses his memories, his life, his childhood. Everything is tied to that house.”
At 50, he has lived there since birth. Despite repeated threats of eviction, he vows to resist.
Waiting for bulldozers When night falls in Al Eizariya, Mohammed and his neighbors gather in a workshop for tea, swapping stories of eviction notices.
“It’s the worst feeling in the world, waiting,” he said.
Across the street, trucks haul out debris from a landfill slated for demolition. In the half-light, the outline of the new road creeps closer each day. EFE pbj-mgs-sk