The Israeli occupation authorities started the process of constructing a new main ring road for the city of Jerusalem, to link the Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, which is north and south of the city.

The construction comes as the Israeli government prepares to start cabinet-level discussions, starting on July 1, regarding the implementation of the electoral promise of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to annex settlements in the West Bank, a planned move that has drawn increasing international criticism.

Israeli officials say the new road - called the American Road - will benefit all residents of the city, but critics of the project say it is another obstacle to Palestinians ’hopes to make East Jerusalem the capital of a future state for them.

Israeli officials affirm that the road, which will include a tunnel of 1.6 km east of the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, will reduce traffic congestion for both Israelis and Palestinians who live in the area.

East Jerusalem isolated

On the other hand, the Palestinians see that the new road will benefit the settlers in the first place, and will further undermine the viability of East Jerusalem as the capital of the state they seek to establish in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian Minister of Jerusalem Affairs, Fadi Al-Hadmi, said in an e-mail to Reuters that the project isolates the Palestinian neighborhoods inside the city from each other.

In response to the agency's questions, Al-Hadhmi said that the American road is part of the "illegal" Israeli ring road project that surrounds occupied East Jerusalem, to increase the linkage of Israeli settlements and cut the occupied Palestinian capital from the rest of the West Bank.

The project comes amid intense debate over the implementation of Netanyahu's election promises to annex West Bank settlements (Getty Images)

Smooth combo

For his part, said Israeli lawyer Daniel Seidemann, who represented some Palestinian families affected by the construction, that the road is in line with a long-term strategy from Israel, using infrastructure projects to secure an "effective annexation" of the lands.

He added that what we see here is once again the smooth annexation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem areas under Israeli control, and said, "The fact that it (the process of building the road) will benefit the Palestinians of East Jerusalem to some extent, is not only a side effect," stressing that its primary purpose is to serve the settlers. .

A quarter of a billion dollars

Reuters quoted an Israeli official in the Jerusalem municipality - who asked not to be named - that the middle and southern parts of the road are already being built, and that tenders will be issued for the northernmost part, at an expected cost of $ 187 million at the end of the year.

The project - which will extend along or near the outskirts of East Jerusalem - is expected to cost over a quarter of a billion dollars.

Israel annexed East Jerusalem - in a move not recognized internationally - after it seized the area, along with the West Bank and Gaza Strip, in the 1967 war.

Successive Israeli governments built settlements in the West Bank on land they seized in the 1967 war, and more than 400,000 Israeli settlers now live, in addition to some 200,000 others in East Jerusalem.