Israel is constructing tunnels that Palestinians will be required to pass through in the heart of the West Bank, making large parts of the occupied territory accessible only to Israelis.
The aim is to remove the Palestinian presence around Jerusalem.
One underground tunnel will soon be the only connection between 1.5 million Palestinians in the southern West Bank and the rest of the territory. This recently approved infrastructure plan, dubbed the “Fabric of Life” project, would effectively split the West Bank into two.
Transportation for Palestinians in the Bethlehem and Hebron governorates to Jericho in the Jordan Valley would go through a new underground tunnel Israel is planning to build to bypass the wilderness east of Jerusalem. What this means is that the entire space between Jerusalem and the edges of the Jordan Valley would become accessible to Israelis only.
The project, approved by the Israeli government earlier this month, will cost $90 billion, which Israel plans to cover from a special fund it feeds with pirated Palestinian customs money collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority (PA). These funds are ostensibly meant for development projects for the Palestinian population in the West Bank, but the project isn’t about the improvement of Palestinian transportation — it’s about the consolidation of Israeli control over the geographic area of the West Bank east of Jerusalem. The Fabric of Life project would effectively ban any Palestinian circulation in this zone.
The larger context of the Fabric of Life is only one piece in Israel’s larger “Greater Jerusalem” development plans, which Israel first laid out in the early 2000s under then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
The idea is simple; connect East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed in 1981 and treats like a part of its territory, to a series of Israeli settlements which extend east of the city through the Jerusalem desert, reaching the very edge of the Jordan Valley. This would transform the some 12-square kilometers in the West Bank targeted by this project into an extension of the eastern limits of Jerusalem. On Israeli maps, this is known as the E-1 area, which stands for “East-1.”
This strip of land, which is 35 kilometers long and 25 kilometers wide, would become a part of Israel proper, cutting through the West Bank from West to East.
In 2007, Israel approved another similar project, dubbed the “Sovereignty Road,” which includes building another underground tunnel that runs under Israel’s Road-1 connecting the southern West Bank to the center, making it the only available route to Palestinians and clearing the road above ground for exclusive Israeli use.
As the Sovereignty Road bypasses the eastern periphery of Jerusalem, which represents Palestinian continuity between the center and the south, the Fabric of Life would bypass the wilderness to the east, which represents Palestinian continuity between Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley. Together, both projects would drain the entire West Bank area east of Jerusalem of Palestinian circulation, isolating the Palestinian communities still living there.
How the underground roads project started
The revival of the “Greater Jerusalem” project came under the current right-wing coalition of Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been rushing to accomplish the annexation of the West Bank at an accelerating rate under the pretext of the current war on Gaza, which Israel launched following the October 7 attacks. But three years before the attacks, in 2021, the Israeli government advanced the first part of the Fabric of Life road project.
At the time, Netanyahu’s government approved the allocation of 14 million shekels (about $4.6 million) to begin the first phase of the project, which consisted of isolating two Palestinian communities in the eastern periphery of Jerusalem: al-Aizariyah and Abu Dis. The two towns, which have virtually merged into one over the years, are located at the junction point of both the Sovereignty and Fabric of Life tunnel projects.
Both towns have been a natural extension of Jerusalem since biblical times. This connection between the towns and the city was a fact of life until the late 1970s, when Israel established the Maale Adumim settlement, which today has the status of a city under Israeli law and houses over 40,000 Israelis.
“Today, the only connection al-Aizariyah has is to the neighboring town of Abu Dis, and both towns are practically one,” says Sara (not her real name), a resident of al-Aizariyah who spoke to Mondoweiss on the condition of anonymity. “There’s one entrance to both towns at the roundabout entrance of Maale Adumim, and another to the south towards Bethlehem.”
The project approved by the Israeli government in 2021 included the first phase of sealing off the entrance to al-Aizariyah at the Maale Adumim roundabout with a wall. This would have left al-Aizariyah trapped between that new wall and the wall at the other side of Abu Dis, separating it from Jerusalem. The only ways out of both towns would be to the south, to Bethlehem, and to the north, towards an Israeli checkpoint at the town of Zaayem.
Living in a ‘big prison’
“If you live in al-Aizariyah, you are basically living in a big prison, with one main street that is crowded at all times,” Sara said. “You can meet your daily basic needs, but leaving is such a long and painful process that you would prefer to avoid it unless you have a good reason, like going to the hospital or if you work out of town.”
“I myself work at a cultural center in al-Aizariyah, so I don’t have to leave the town, and before October 2023, I used to go to Ramallah once a month just to see friends, although Ramallah is literally 15 minutes away if there weren’t so many traffic jams all the time” Sara pointed out. “Since the beginning of the current war, the Israeli police have closed the entrance at the roundabout arbitrarily at any time, sometimes for minutes, sometimes for hours, increasing the traffic jam in the town, which makes leaving al-Aizariyah and Abu Dis even harder.”
“Since October 2023, I have lived between my house and the cultural center, and I leave al-Aizariyah only once every three or four months,” Sara noted. “If that is not a prison, then what is?”
“At the cultural center, we offer courses in music, art, and languages to the kids in al-Aizariyah and Abu Dis, and in the past year, we have had to cancel some courses because teachers were stuck on the way there for hours, due to a checkpoint closure or a traffic jam. Some colleagues who come from Bethlehem or Ramallah often have to work from home for the same reason,” she detailed.
This situation has been the status quo in al-Aizariyeh for years, well before the Fabric of Life and Sovereignty Road even started to be implemented. But the projects would seal the town off even further, shifting Palestinians’ way out to a tunnel that would start at southeastern al-Aizariyah and make its way underneath its eastern edge for 4.5 kilometers, emerging from underground on the other side of the Zaayem checkpoint near the Palestinian town of Anata, heading straight to Ramallah from there. The second part of the project — the Fabric of Life — was approved earlier in May. It would shift Palestinian circulation through another tunnel, starting at the same location south of al-Aizariyeh, but would head east, where Palestinians would come to the surface near Jericho, bypassing the eastern wilderness of Jerusalem.
The Zaayem checkpoint, which currently restricts Palestinian vehicles’ circulation on the Israeli-built Road 1, would be removed, and the road would become exclusively Israeli. The impact would reach further than al-Aizariyah and Abu Dis, including all Palestinian circulation between Ramallah, Jericho, and the southern governorates of Bethlehem and Hebron, where 1.5 million Palestinians live.
A Palestinian minibus driver, who requested anonymity due to security concerns, described the arduous daily route he takes between Ramallah and Bethlehem.
“Every day, I leave Ramallah to the south and I drive right in front of the Qalandia checkpoint, which separates us from Jerusalem, and head to the Zaayem checkpoint,” he told Mondoweiss.
From there, he said, he continues along a stretch of Road 1, traveling beside Israeli settlers en route to Maale Adumim. Just before entering the settlement, he veers right into the congested streets of al-Aizariyah, eventually reaching the “Container” checkpoint just north of Bethlehem.
Before October 2023, the driver said he was able to make four round trips each day, carrying seven passengers per trip. “That was barely enough to cover the expenses of the minibus and make a living,” he explained. “But after the war on Gaza, the Israeli army started closing Zaayem, the Container, and the Aizariyah entrance more often, causing traffic jams.”
Now, the situation has worsened to the point where he only manages a single round trip each day. “Every morning, when the minibus is full of passengers and I leave Ramallah, I begin to think of the long road ahead,” he said.
Whether it’s a traffic jam at Qalandia or a surprise closure at Zaayem or the Container checkpoint, he often finds himself spending two to three hours on the road with his passengers. “And I tell myself once more that I hate this job.”
Looking ahead, he expressed concern about the Sovereignty Road and Fabric of Life tunnels, which he said could further complicate travel for Palestinians. Under the proposed changes, he would bypass al-Aizariyah altogether via the planned tunnel system, meaning he’d no longer be able to drop passengers off directly in al-Aizariyah or Abu Dis. “They would have to make their way home from there themselves,” he said.
Moreover, he fears the new routes may lead to tighter restrictions. “Traffic would probably get worse,” he added. “When we don’t share the road with settlers, the Israeli army doesn’t mind closing the road for the whole day. It would take one soldier to close the tunnel.”
Thinning out the Palestinian population in ‘Greater Jerusalem’
The minibus driver also explained how the infrastructure projects would affect the Palestinian communities living in the area that would be blocked off to Palestinian circulation, making up dozens of Bedouin communities.
“I would stop driving near the Bedouin communities along Road-1,” the driver said. “They live between al-Aizariyah and Jericho, and I wouldn’t be able to transport passengers from these communities.”
The Bedouin passengers who wouldn’t be able to take the Ramallah-Bethlehem minibus are the residents of 25 Bedouin communities in the lands to the east of Jerusalem, where Israel plans to expand its Greater Jerusalem project. These are precisely the communities that the Fabric of Life tunnel would leave out of any Palestinian circulation line. They include the famous Bedouin communities of Khan al-Ahmar and Jabal al-Baba, which Israel has been trying to displace for years.
The fact that these communities are located on the Palestinian road from the center to the south of the West Bank has maintained the continuity of Palestinian presence through the West Bank, especially this vital area linking north to south. The isolation of these communities, who over the years have resisted their displacement — in part thanks to the access of Palestinians to those communities — would facilitate their ethnic cleansing.
The isolation and later displacement of these communities would be the final move before annexing the entire E-1 area to the new Israeli limits of Jerusalem, eliminating Palestinian demographic continuity in the West Bank and taking away any geographic basis for a Palestinian state.
This is not the only long-term impact of the tunnel projects. “Life in al-Aizariyah and Abu Dis is already difficult enough, and the crowding of both towns is mainly due to the fact that they are in the middle of the way between the center and the south,” Sara pointed out. “Incidentally, this helps local businesses, and people can still go to work and come back despite the difficulty. But if this project passes, we will be completely isolated and sealed off even further. I already imagine longer closures, and those who work in Ramallah or Bethlehem would definitely find themselves forced to move to those cities.”
The life conditions experienced by Palestinians in al-Aizariyah are the same in other towns in the Jerusalem periphery — isolated from the city by Israeli walls and checkpoints, like Shu’fat, Qalandia, and Anata. Isolating them further only makes life in these places harder, pushing Palestinians to migrate from these communities alongside their Bedouin neighbors. The larger objective is to “thin out” the demographic presence of Palestinians in the area.
Qassam Muaddi is the Palestine Staff Writer for Mondoweiss.
RELATED
- I told the truth about the West Bank and was threatened and assaulted. Now I’m relying on you to act
- 58 years since the Naksa, Israel’s destructive West Bank military operation fuels mass forced displacement of Palestinians
- Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the West Bank is growing more frantic
- A West Bank Village Destroyed
- Israeli forces strip and arbitrarily detain two Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank
