Ahlulbayt News Agency: The Al-Quds Governorate warned on Monday that nearly 7,000 Palestinians living in 22 Bedouin communities east of the city are facing imminent risk of forcible displacement due to ongoing Israeli settlement plans known as the “E1 Project” and the so-called “Sovereignty Road.”
In a press statement, the governorate explained that implementing these projects would almost completely isolate the Bedouin communities of Jabal al-Baba and Wadi Jamal from the nearby town of al-Eizariya.
The warning comes just days after Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, approved the construction of thousands of settlement units in the E1 area, located east of occupied Al-Quds.
The E1 scheme, dubbed the “Eastern Gateway”, was first introduced in 1994 over 12,440 dunums of land with plans to build 3,500 housing units and ten hotels. It was initially approved in 1997, when some infrastructure was established and a police headquarters was relocated there. However, the plan was frozen for years under US and international pressure amid fears of derailing the so-called peace process.
According to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, advancing the project would create urban continuity between the illegal settlement of Ma’ale Adumim and Al-Quds, deepening the isolation of East Al-Quds from the rest of the occupied West Bank and undermining geographic contiguity between its northern and southern regions.
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