Israel pushes ahead with Atarot settlement plan north of occupied Jerusalem

Jerusalem local authorities warned on Monday that Israel is pushing ahead with a plan to establish a large settlement on the land of the former Jerusalem International Airport, north of occupied Jerusalem, in a serious escalation in illegal settlement expansion.

In a statement, the governorate said the plan directly targets Palestinian geographic and demographic continuity between Jerusalem and Ramallah, undermining any remaining prospects for a two-state solution and obstructing the development of East Jerusalem as the political and urban centre of a future Palestinian state.

The former airport, also known as Atarot or Qalandia, lies in a strategic corridor between Ramallah and occupied East Jerusalem, just beyond Israel's separation wall.

It is one of the last major tracts of land where Palestinian urban continuity can still be preserved, making it a central target in Israeli efforts to sever Palestinian territorial links in the north of the city.

According to the statement, the settlement plan aims to construct around 9,000 housing units in the heart of a densely populated Palestinian area, including Kafr Aqab, Qalandia, Al-Ram, Beit Hanina, and Bir Nabala.

The governorate said the project would fragment Palestinian urban space north of Jerusalem and entrench Israel's policy of physical separation and isolation imposed on the city and its surroundings.

It noted that the so-called Israeli District Planning and Building Committee was scheduled to hold a session on Wednesday to advance Plan No. 101-0764936. The meeting could approve the plan's core components, including commercial and public spaces, despite earlier attempts in 2021 being blocked following objections from Israel’s own ministries of environmental protection and health.

The airport was built during the British Mandate and later operated as a regional airport under Jordanian administration before being seized by Israel following its occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967.

Civilian flights were halted in 2000 during the Second Intifada, after which Israeli authorities gradually reclassified the site from a civilian airport into a land reserve earmarked for illegal settlement construction.

Plans to establish a major settlement at Atarot first emerged in the early 2000s, and later resurfaced in statutory form in the late 2010s, drawing repeated criticism from Palestinians and the international community.

The project was among several East Jerusalem settlement schemes quietly frozen during the presidency of Barack Obama, when the US administration linked settlement expansion in occupied East Jerusalem to broader diplomatic efforts around a two-state framework.

Since the Trump era, Israeli governments have increasingly moved to advance politically sensitive settlement projects, including Atarot, Givat Hamatos and the E-1 corridor, despite ongoing international objections.

The governorate added that Israel's finance ministry had this month requested that the Knesset Finance Committee approve the transfer of 16 million shekels (around $4.9 million) to the Ministry of Environmental Protection under the pretext of rehabilitating contaminated land at the airport site.

This was intended to neutralise environmental objections and fast-track settlement construction, with the governorate noting that such objections had previously been among the few internal obstacles to these projects.

According to the statement, most of the land included in the plan has been designated by Israel as "state land" based on classifications dating back to the British Mandate period, despite the existence of large areas of privately owned Palestinian property.

These areas, it said, were set to undergo forced consolidation and subdivision without the consent of their owners, a practice rights groups say was routinely used to dispossess Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem.

The Jerusalem Governorate warned that implementing the plan would create a settlement enclave that cuts off north of the city from other surrounding Palestinian areas, accelerating its fragmentation.

It said it would continue to raise the issue with the international community and human rights organisations, describing the project as a clear violation of international law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention, and multiple United Nations resolutions that deem Israeli settlements in occupied territory illegal.