How one road and an Israeli settlement could end dreams for this Palestinian city

EZARIAAH, West Bank — Next to the desk of the mayor of Bethany (Ezariya in Arabic) hangs an enlarged aerial photograph from 1938 showing what this Palestinian town on the edge of Jerusalem once looked like:

Before the Israeli separation wall cut off access to Jerusalem in the west, before the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim took root nearby, and before a new wall would soon seal it off from the east, effectively splitting the occupied West Bank in two.

On a recent day, Mayor Khalil Abu Al-Rish stared at the photo, a cigarette in one hand and a sullen expression on his face, then pointed out his office window with his other hand at the bustling main street of Ezariya, the main artery that connects northern West Bank cities like Ramallah to Bethlehem and Hebron in the south.

“55,000 people live in this town. According to our research, 60 cars pass through this road alone every minute. [Israeli] “Our plan now is to close it down,” he said.

“If you do this, there will be no Palestinian state.”

The “plan” Abu Al-Rish is referring to is East One, or E1, a long-delayed Israeli project that aims to build 3,400 new settlement homes on a 3,000-acre site in the mountains stretching from East Jerusalem to Maale Adumim.

A billboard announcing the availability of new Israeli settlements in the West Bank as Israel continues its expansion plans into the E1 region.

This is another in a series of moves by Israel over the past two years to advance the possible annexation of the West Bank, which Palestinians see as part of their future state and which Israel seized from Jordan in 1967; The occupation is considered illegal under international law. President Trump has said that annexation is a red line that he will not allow Israel to cross, but at the same time he has not deterred Israel from expanding settlements in the region.

E1 would cut off any Palestinian connection with East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians hope to make their capital, and undermine the chances of establishing a contiguous Palestinian state.

The Palestinian Bedouin community of Jabal Al-Baba, or Papa Hill, is under threat of forced displacement due to Israeli settlement expansion plans for the E1 area. The Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim is seen in the background.

This week, ultranationalist ministers in the Israeli parliament gave preliminary approval to a bill giving Israel the power to annex the West Bank. It was a largely symbolic move that appeared to be an attempt to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu has long called for the annexation of the West Bank but has refrained from doing so for fear it would anger Israel’s main patron in the United States.

U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance kneels over the Stone of Unction, believed to be the site where Jesus’ body was laid as he was removed from the cross and prepared for burial, while touring the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem’s Old City on Thursday.

(Nathan Howard, Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

Vice President J.D. Vance, who visited Israel this week, said of the vote on Thursday, “If this is a political stunt, then it’s a very stupid political stunt.”

“I personally find it a little insulting,” Vance said. “The policy of the Trump administration is that the West Bank should not be annexed by Israel.”

However, Israel has taken many steps aimed at making annexation a de facto scenario that may soon become irreversible. He restricted movement by erecting 288 gates at the entrances and exits of Palestinian towns and villages; Although the number and size of settlements has increased, the addition of what the UN says are 849 “barriers to movement” has further confined Palestinians to islands from which they have little chance of leaving.

Abu Al-Rish said such a gate, a yellow metal barrier on the road that Israeli soldiers locked and then exited, appeared this month at the eastern entrance of Ezariya.

“We watched it set up one night. They don’t talk to us or ask for permission,” he said with a faint smile on his face.

Businesses and homes near the gate were ordered demolished to make way for a separation barrier; The Israeli-built barricade consisted of 26-meter-high cement walls resembling rows of piano keys that cut across parts of the West Bank.

One of the affected owners, Omar Abu Saho, 50, who runs a toy store, said he received a legal notice on October 4. He said that the deadline to leave the area has expired, but no one has come to enforce it for now. But the order certainly didn’t help matters.

“Look around, this place is empty. And I can’t get any more stock. If I sell anything, that’s it,” he said.

A Palestinian carries an egg at the entrance of the West Bank town of Ezariya, where Israel has set up a security gate.

Abu Saho had to move here from the West Bank city of Jenin with his two sons and five daughters.
Although Jenin is approximately 160 kilometers from the Gaza Strip, the city was still the focus of sustained Israeli military operations when Israel launched an assault on the area after the Hamas offensive on October 7, 2023, and many merchants such as Abu Saho were forced to close their shops.

“We couldn’t continue there, so I came here. Now it looks like I’ll have to move again. Mind your business,” he said. “The Israelis destroyed me three or four times. But I keep going every time. Moreover, I like to work. I cannot live if I despair.”

Omar Hassan Abu Ghali, 51, who owns a car wash with his family on Ezariya’s main road, was less optimistic. He said he felt his “life was over” the night he saw the gate being installed.

Looking at the cars entering through the open door at that moment, he said, “You can build a wall here, this area is goodbye. There is nothing anymore.”

“The Israelis want to cut off my livelihood for me and my children. What should I do?” he asked. “Where do I need to go?”

Hussein Hamad, the caretaker of the archaeological pilgrimage site in Ezariya, where the tomb of Lazarus is thought to be located, said that tourism to the region has almost completely disappeared.

Palestinians gather at a market selling used goods in the West Bank town of Ezariya.

“October is our best month. I get 20 to 25 groups a week. How many do you see around you right now?” he said, waving his hand at the seemingly abandoned area. A nearby shop owner looked expectantly at the two people visiting the grave, but when he realized they were reporters, he turned back, locked the shop and walked away.

As part of the E1 project, Israel plans to build a Palestinian-only transit road – euphemistically called the “Texture of Life Road” or “Sovereignty Road” – that it says will solve the problem of movement between parts of the West Bank, passing through parts of Ezariya without allowing Palestinian traffic near Maale Adumim.

But critics, including Peace Now, an Israeli advocacy group that supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, rejected the bypass in a statement in March when the project was first approved as an “apartheid road” that “serves no purpose in improving Palestinian transportation.”

“Instead, it merely aims to facilitate the annexation of a large area,” Peace Now said. The group noted the irony that the road would not be funded by Israeli taxpayers but would use customs revenues that Israel collects but often hides on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.

Palestinian Bedouin community at Jebel El-Baba, or Papa Hill, in the foreground.

Abu Al-Rish said the ring road would also destroy more of Ezariya land, a significant portion of which has been expropriated by Israel. This would prevent the expansion the town desperately needs to accommodate the growing population. He added that if road work continues, Ezariya’s role as Palestine’s leading commercial center will come to an end.

“We have more than 1,000 businesses here. In front of you is the longest commercial street in the West Bank,” he said.

“It’s inconceivable to me that this will go away.”

This is not the first time Israel has tried to implement E1. First proposed in 1994 under Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (a year after he signed the Oslo Accords that would establish the Palestinian state), E1 faltered in the face of concerted international opposition, including Israel’s traditional allies who feared the project’s impact on the West Bank.

Just two years ago, Abu Al-Rish said US officials would assure him that the plan would not come true. Even now European countries have opposed E1 and condemned the Israeli government for approving the plan in August. The Trump administration took a different path.

“We’re not going to tell Israel what to do. We’re not going to intervene,” US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, an ardent supporter of Israel and settlements, said in an interview with Galatz radio in August.

Israel has so far built about 160 settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, home to 3.3 million Palestinians as well as about 700,000 Jews.

Israel argues that E1 connecting Maale Adumim to Jerusalem is a necessity for both urban planning and security. But Israeli politicians are clear about the impact of E1.

Children from the Palestinian Bedouin community of Jebel Al-Baba gather in a circle with their teachers.

Following the approval in August, Bezalel Smotrich, the ultranationalist finance minister in the Netanyahu government, said: “The state of Palestine is being taken off the table with actions, not slogans.” He framed the decision as a response to a number of countries that recognize the state of Palestine.

“Every settlement, every neighborhood, every house is a nail in the coffin of this dangerous idea,” he said.

Since the E1 project was recorded, Atallah Mazaraa, a Bedouin living in an area near Ezariya called Papa Hill (or Jebel Al-Baba, so named because it was gifted to the pope when the area was under Jordanian control), has waged a crushing legal battle to keep his community in place.

Sitting in a prefabricated hut that doubles as the office where he runs his legal campaign, Mazaraa recalled the times when his flock of sheep and goats could roam and graze where Maale Adumim now stands. Then, as the thousands of square miles of land open to their animals became smaller with each passing year, the water source from which they drank was confiscated for the settlement’s use.

“Every day they try to get more and more. You just don’t have stability,” he said.

International recognition means nothing to Mazaraa.

“We Palestinians know that when you go from Nablus to Jericho there is no state. So what, I want a passport, a piece of paper that says I have a state, when there are checkpoints every 200 meters?” he said.

“All we want from the Israelis is to leave us alone,” he said. “But they took most of the West Bank.”