On February 22, 2026, Israel is expected to begin construction of the controversial “Sovereignty Road,” referred to by Palestinians as the “Apartheid Road,” between the Palestinian towns of al-‘Izariyya and al-Za‘ayim. The road will separate Israeli from Palestinian traffic and result in the closure of the entire Ma‘ale Adumim and E1 Development Plan area—about 3 percent of the West Bank—to Palestinians.1

In preparation for the construction, on January 8, 2026, the Israeli army informed attorney Netta Amar-Shiff of its intention to seize and demolish Palestinian homes in the area designated for the road. In 2021, Amar-Shiff petitioned Israel’s Supreme Court against building the road on behalf of the municipality of al-‘Izariyya and the Bedouin villages of Jabal al-Baba, Wadi al-Jamal, and ‘Arab al-Saraya, which will all be harmed by the road’s construction.2 Now, these communities have until February 22 to file objections to the road.

Israel’s Ministry of Defense designated the highway as a security road in order to bypass regular planning requirements, such as securing approval from Israel’s Higher Planning Council in the Civil Administration. Under the guise of security, the Israeli military can issue seizure orders of the land where construction will take place, including within Area B of the West Bank, where only the Palestinian Authority (PA) is supposed to have control over planning, per the Oslo Accords. The road passes through the village of ‘Arab al-Saraya, located in Area B.3

“The road will disconnect the Bedouin communities from al-‘Izariyya and nearby villages,” Abu Imad al-Jahaleen, head of the Abu Nuwar Bedouin community who reside just south of the road’s planned pathway, told Jerusalem Story.4 “Tens of establishments, whether residential or commercial or industrial, will be demolished,” he went on. “The road will confiscate 12,000 dunams of land from al-‘Izariyya and its neighboring villages and this land will be off limits to us.”

“Twenty-two Bedouin communities will be displaced. That’s 7,000 residents,” al-Jahaleen elaborated. “The lawyer said there was nothing more she could do. She said that political pressure was needed from the international community or the United States to stop the project.”

“We’ve gotten a new lawyer through an Israeli organization who is helping us prepare to take our objection to the Supreme Court,” al-Jahaleen continued.5 “If we don’t stop the project, the least we hope to be able to do is delay it.”

The planned road paves destruction for the Bedouin communities east of Jerusalem. “There will be demolitions in al-Saraya in order to build the road, because the path of the road is where they live,” Hagit Ofran, codirector of the Settlement Watch Project at Israeli activist group Peace Now, told Jerusalem Story.6

The villages of Jabal al-Baba and Wadi al-Jamal would be sliced in half by the Apartheid Road, barring residents from their lands. And Bedouin communities farther east, like Khan al-Ahmar, will become islands once the asphalt dries.

“All the Bedouin communities along the road will be closed,” Ofran said. “They cannot access them by car, and this would deal them a death blow. You cannot sustain houses without access to cars.”

Ofran explains that Israel may create army-patrolled entrances for these villages, with soldiers overseeing what and who enters. This insidious plan of ethnic cleansing by asphyxiation will barricade these Jerusalem villages, much like Khallat al-Nu‘man in south Jerusalem, easing the process of ultimate annexation (see Israel Increasing Efforts to Expel Jerusalem’s Palestinian Villages).

“This kind of pressure might lead to the eventual displacement of the community,” Ofran said. “Their lives are going to be very hard. And this government considers all those communities as illegal, so this closure will be a way to get rid of them.”

The intended route is an extension of Route 4370, first built under former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon in 2005, in an attempt to assuage US concerns surrounding Israel’s then-proposed E1 settlement plan. At the time, the US rejected the settlement endeavor, because E1 construction would further fragment Palestinian territory and erase the possibility of creating a viable, contiguous Palestinian state.

Sharon countered this opposition by presenting Route 4370 as a way to offer Palestinians “transportational contiguity” under the E1 settlement plan. Israel even named the highway the “Fabric of Life Road” to sell the laughable idea that it will improve Palestinians’ living conditions. Under pressure from the international community, construction of the route halted in 2007 after only half of it was completed.

The four-lane highway is divided by an eight-meter-high concrete wall, with the western side serving Palestinians driving cars with green, West Bank, license plates, and the eastern side solely for Israelis driving with yellow, Israeli license plates.7 Opening of the road’s northern segment stalled until 2019 (see Jerusalem Expert Explains Israel’s Apartheid Road Expansion), after settlers lobbied for a road allowing them to travel from the northern West Bank to the south without entering central Jerusalem.

Today, the road links the Palestinian villages of Hizma and al-Za‘ayim east of Jerusalem, but it terminates there. The Israeli side links to Route 1—connecting the Jordan Valley to Tel Aviv—and Route 437, situated between East Jerusalem and the Israeli Jewish settlement of Mishor Adumim. Palestinian-plated traffic can currently access both Route 1 and 437, but when the Apartheid Road is completed, drivers of Palestinian-plated cars will be blocked from using these highways and instead will only be able to travel on the Apartheid Road without any vehicular access to the entire E1 area.8

The second half of the road will run parallel to Jerusalem, with the Israeli side allowing for access into the city via exits. In contrast, there are no exit or entry points for Jerusalem on the Palestinian-plated side.

The route’s planned expansion will connect the Palestinian villages of Hizma and ‘Anata with al-‘Izariyya, and it will pass directly through al-‘Izariyya, known in the Bible as Bethany. In August 2025, the Civil Administration ordered the demolition of 40 buildings in al-‘Izariyya (see Israel Accelerates Plans to Build E1, Entailing Mass Displacement of Bedouin Communities), though this has not yet been carried out. As elsewhere in the occupied West Bank, Israel has been busy this year sealing and gating off Palestinian localities on Jerusalem’s perimeter (see Perspective: Color-Coded Gates and Frightening Uncertainty in Bethany and Israel Is Besieging Palestinian Towns and Villages outside Jerusalem, to the Northwest and Northeast).

The Apartheid Road plays an integral part in developing the E1 settlement project, which covers a 12-kilometer-square corridor in the West Bank just east of Jerusalem. Approved in August 2025, the more than 3,000-unit settler housing scheme requires relocating al-Za‘ayim checkpoint, frequently used by Palestinians to enter Jerusalem, eastward.

Doing so ensures the 36,000 Israelis who live in Ma‘ale Adumim will be able to swiftly access Jerusalem without passing through a checkpoint, while also absorbing Ma‘ale Adumim and surrounding settlements into Jerusalem—creating a contiguous Israeli space.

“This road contributes to integrating the entire E1 area seamlessly into the Israeli road grid,” Daniel Seidemann, founder and director of Terrestrial Jerusalem, an Israeli nonprofit that monitors geopolitical developments on the ground in Jerusalem, told Jerusalem Story.9

“This is a major contribution to the neutralization of the Palestinian presence in the area through displacement and encirclement,” Seidemann explained. “It means that Palestinians will be able to go through the area around E1, but they will not be able to access any of that area, because they will be contained on sealed roads.”

“This will make the land accessible for Israeli settlement,” Seidemann stressed. “That’s major. It is tantamount to de facto annexation.”

Al-Za‘ayim checkpoint will be relocated to Mishor Adumim, so all of the lands west of it, like al-Jahaleen’s village of Bir al-Maskub, will become Israeli territory, available for new settler housing. Al-Jahaleen already received a demolition order for his home in December 2025, with the notice describing his village as part of E1 (see Israel Accelerates Plans to Build E1, Entailing Mass Displacement of Bedouin Communities).

The Apartheid Road serves as the backbone to the E1 settlement plan, fusing E1 with Israel and paving the way for annexation. “There is no intention whatsoever to improve Palestinian transportation, only to enable the annexation of a vast area—about 3% of the West Bank—to Israel,” Peace Now said in a press release on the road’s pending construction.10

The Israeli name for the road, “Sovereignty Road,” makes Route 4370’s ultimate goal abundantly clear: complete Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem.