RAMALLAH, Palestine / ISTANBUL

Israel began to build a new settlement road northeast of occupied East Jerusalem, Palestinian authorities said on Sunday. 

The Jerusalem Governorate said in a statement that Israeli bulldozers began the construction in the town of Hizma under the protection of army forces. 

It decried the Israeli road construction as “a crime aimed at altering the area’s features and Judaizing it.” 

“The ruling Israeli right continues to accelerate the pace of land confiscation, deepen settlement (expansion), and practice the most heinous forms of ethnic cleansing against Palestinian citizens in Jerusalem and all areas classified as C, in blatant defiance of the UN resolutions,” the governorate said. 

The Oslo II Accords of 1995 partitioned the West Bank into Areas A, B, and C. 

Area C, which makes up nearly 61% of the territory and hosts nearly all settlements, remained under full Israeli civil and security control. 

The latest move came as part of Israeli efforts to change the “historical, political, legal, and demographic reality of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and undermine the two-state solution,” the governorate said. 

According to the Palestinian Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, Israel has built at least 710 settlements and military outposts in the occupied West Bank, an average of one settlement every 8 square kilometers, since 1967. 

Since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip in October 2023, at least 1,014 Palestinians have been killed and more than 7,000 injured in the West Bank by Israeli forces and illegal settlers, according to the Health Ministry. 

In an advisory opinion last July, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal and called for the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.