Israeli occupation authorities are poised to advance plans for approximately 9,000 new housing units in an illegal settlement at the site of the abandoned Qalandiya airport in occupied East Jerusalem. This development is widely viewed as another attempt to fragment Palestinian territory and obstruct the formation of a contiguous Palestinian state.
The settlement in question, known as the Atarot neighborhood, is located in northern East Jerusalem and has drawn parallels to the controversial E1 project, which has long faced criticism for undermining Palestinian statehood. According to the Israeli watchdog group Peace Now, the plan is set to be discussed and its outlines approved on Wednesday by the District Planning and Building Committee.
Peace Now stated that the settlement would be constructed in a densely populated Palestinian urban area, extending from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank through Kafr Aqab, the Qalandiya refugee camp, ar-Ram, Beit Hanina, and Bir Nabala. The initiative would effectively create an Israeli enclave amid hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, thereby obstructing development in a strategically important region and further diminishing the prospects for a viable Palestinian state.
“This is a destructive plan that, if implemented, would sever East Jerusalem from the surrounding Palestinian areas and, in practice, prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel,” Peace Now cautioned.
The proposal dates back to early 2020 when Israel’s Housing Ministry submitted it to the Jerusalem municipality for approval. While the bureaucratic process was completed swiftly, the plan encountered objections from Israel’s Environmental Protection and Health ministries. Notably, the administration of former U.S. President Barack Obama opposed the project.
The push for the Atarot settlement comes against the backdrop of Israel’s accelerated expansion of illegal settlements across occupied Palestinian territories, coupled with ongoing efforts to annex parts of the occupied West Bank amid an intensified conflict in Gaza, which has reportedly resulted in over 70,000 fatalities since it began in October 2023.
Earlier, the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs urged for urgent international intervention to halt the settlement plans. In a statement, the ministry asserted that projects such as Atarot and E1 are integral to a broader strategy aimed at undermining the establishment of a Palestinian state by weakening its geographic and demographic coherence, fragmenting the West Bank into isolated enclaves surrounded by settlements, and facilitating further annexation.
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