RAMALLAH, West Bank, 10 October 2007 — The Israel Army recently issued an order expropriating over 1,100 dunams or 272 acres (110 hectares) of land from four Palestinian villages located between East Jerusalem and the West Bank settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim.

The land is slated to be used for a new Palestinian road that would connect East Jerusalem with the West Bank city of Jericho. That in turn would “free up” the E-1 area between Jerusalem and Ma’aleh Adumim — through which the current Jerusalem-Jericho road runs — for a long-planned Jewish development consisting of 3,500 apartments and an industrial park.

The Palestinians and the international community, including the United States, have long objected to the E-1 plan on the grounds that it would cut the West Bank in two and sever East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank. Israel claims that the new road will solve this problem.

Due mainly to American objections, the E-1 plan has been frozen since 2004, other than the construction of a thus-far empty Israeli police station in the area. Israeli Public Security Minister Avi Dichter said last week that police would move into the station by the end of this year. However, Israel has promised the United States that the station would not serve as an initial stage of a full housing project.

The land is being confiscated from the villages of Abu Dis, Arab Al-Sawahra, Nabi Musa and Talhin Alhamar. The expropriation order was signed Sept. 24 and made public yesterday.

The new road will run along a route originally planned by the Ma’aleh Adumim municipality in 2005. According to that plan, the route was meant to ensure “transport contiguity among Palestinian population centers.”

The plan also noted that the proposed housing development in E-1 would create an uninterrupted urban expanse between Jerusalem and Ma’aleh Adumim. Such an expanse would effectively sever the territorial contiguity between the northern and southern West Bank.

Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Haim Ramon, the minister in charge of the “seam” region that runs along the border between Israel and the West Bank, told the Israel Radio that he was not consulted about the expropriation order and knows nothing about it.

An official in the US Embassy in Tel Aviv, who asked to remain anonymous, told the Israeli daily Haaretz that he could not comment on the expropriation order, “since we don’t yet know all the details,” but in general the US opposes any move that could impair the chances of an Israeli-Palestinian final-status deal.

Egypt yesterday strongly criticized the Israeli plan. The plan “proves the correctness of reports that Israel is planning to go ahead with its scheme to separate the northern parts of the West Bank from its southern ones,” Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki said in a statement.

Zaki said the move was “extremely worrying” and appealed to the international community to get Israel to “stop playing with the fate and destiny of people in the region by throwing the option of a just peace out the window.”

“Going ahead with this project is in total contradiction with efforts by all parties to resume serious political negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians,” he said.