Occupation forces have confiscated 9 dunums of land from Shufat north of Jerusalem to expand the military checkpoint located on the western entrance to Shufat refugee camp. This checkpoint links Shufat Refugee Camp and Anata town with Jerusalem. Locals confirmed that the Occupation wants to develop this checkpoint into a “border terminal”. Further land around this fortified checkpoint will be confiscated as a ‘security’ zone. When construction is completed it will further institutionalize the harassement already in place at the checkpoint and lengthen the procedures that decide over Palestinian life. Two people have already died this year at checkpoints around Jerusalem.
Omar Rashid Abu Kamel from Shufat RC, 42 years old with 6 children, died when soldiers prevented an ambulance reaching him after he had a heart attack. He was taken by car to the checkpoint where he died whilst waiting to reach the ambulance. At Sheikh Sa’ad checkpoint east of Jerusalem asthma sufferer Shihade Ahmad Mahsen, 51 years old also with children, needed to reach Makased hospital in Jerusalem. After being detained and beaten at the checkpoint he died. People from places like Shufat, Anata and Abu Dis who have Jerusalem ID and work or study in Jerusalem are regularly detained at these checkpoints.
Last week Occupation forces confiscated 128 dunums of agricultural land from Hizma northeast of Jerusalem in order to expand the checkpoint west of the town and isolate it from Jerusalem.
This new theft of land comes as Occupation forces are accelerating work on the footprint of the Wall around Greater Jerusalem. Checkpoints located within the West Bank and on the route of the Apartheid Wall are being transformed into “border”, commercial and labour “terminals”. There will be around 34 fortified checkpoints in all as part of the Apartheid Wall regime. Four have already been created – at Qalandia north of Jerusalem, Bethlehem south of Jerusalem, Bardala “commercial terminal” in the northern Jordan Valley and Qalqilya “labour terminal” south of Qalqilya.
The Zionist regime’s plans to imprison Palestinians into a series of discontinuous ghettos whilst annexing land and resources in the West Bank and Jerusalem are nearing completion with the completion of the fortified checkpoints closing off the ghettos.
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