Israeli bulldozers raze about 50 Palestinian shops ahead of settlement-linked road project

AL-EIZARIYA, West Bank (AP) - Israeli bulldozers tore down dozens of Palestinian shops on the edge of a town southeast of Jerusalem this week, clearing land ahead of a settlement-linked road project in the occupied West Bank.

Israel says the demolitions are needed to make way for a road serving Palestinian communities. But Palestinian officials say the road is part of a broader plan to keep Palestinian vehicles off a new highway being built to serve nearby Israeli settlements.

That project is part of a strategic section of the West Bank known as E1, which Israel is developing with the intention of preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state.

"The shops that were demolished are where Israel is planning to build a new road that will divert all Palestinian traffic to that road so that they can close down the whole area of E1 for Palestinians," said Hagit Ofran, director of the antisettlement group Peace Now.

Tuesday's demolitions took place in the town of al-Eizariya, less than a week after some owners received notices to evacuate shops built without permits. Attorneys appealed, up to Israel's Supreme Court, but the demolitions went ahead.

Israeli authorities said the buildings including car washes, scrap metal shops and vegetable stands were built illegally and owners had been warned for "several years" enforcement was forthcoming.

COGAT, the Israeli military body overseeing civil affairs in the West Bank, said the structures obstructed construction of the planned road to connect Palestinian towns.

The new road system is meant to solve congestion and improve the quality of life of Palestinian towns in the area, Israel says.

Rights groups and the internationally backed Palestinian Authority say the demolitions are connected to Israel's plans to overhaul transportation and create separate road systems for Israeli and Palestinian ID holders. They say Israel's planned tunnel-and-bypass road will reroute Palestinian traffic off a major Israeli highway linking nearby West Bank settlements to Jerusalem, in effect cutting off drivers from large swaths of the territory.

Some of the demolished shops partially blocked sidewalks and roads leading into the town. But Palestinians say proper construction permits are nearly impossible to obtain from Israeli authorities, even as Israeli settlements rapidly expand.

Mohammad Abu Ghalieh, a 48-year-old shop owner, was dumbfounded that he would have to start over after the demolitions.

"Forty-eight years of night and day to build something for his children and himself, and in one day and one night, everything was gone," he said.

Daoud al-Jahalin, the head of nearby village council, said more than 200 families would lose their incomes.

The E1 project is especially contentious because it runs from the outskirts of Jerusalem deep into the occupied West Bank, isolating the cities of Ramallah and Bethlehem and hindering north-south movement for the Palestinians.

Both Israeli leaders and critics of settlements say the E1 plan would complicate efforts to establish of a contiguous Palestinian state in the West Bank. Israel is planning to build some 3,500 apartments next to the existing settlement of Maale Adumim.

Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war. The international community overwhelmingly considers Israeli settlement construction in the occupied territory to be illegal and an obstacle to peace.