Occupied Jerusalem— For years, the occupying Israeli municipality in Jerusalem has been promoting a project it calls “Silicon Valley,” a high-tech initiative purported to create thousands of jobs for Palestinians in Jerusalem. However, land and settlement expert Khalil Tafakji has revealed the true objectives behind the project.
Recently, the project, set to be built on approximately 30 dunams (a dunam is 1000 square meters) of Jerusalemite lands in the industrial zone of Wadi al-Joz, passed new approvals in the Jerusalem municipality, paving the way for its implementation.
Tafakji says that the project is part of a clear Israeli policy based on “the integration process between East Jerusalem (occupied in 1967) and West Jerusalem (occupied in 1948).”
He explained that for the Israeli side, this means that “Jerusalem is indivisible,” thus preempting events by establishing settlement outposts inside Palestinian neighborhoods, “as part of a very clear program aimed primarily at encircling Palestinian neighborhoods, dividing and separating them, with Silicon Valley being part of this program.”
The settlement expert mentioned that the Israeli program is drafted to be implemented between the years 2024 and 2028, allocating around one billion dollars for “a clear strategic goal that includes integrating infrastructure that will thereafter make it difficult to separate West Jerusalem from East Jerusalem, which Palestinians demand as their capital.”
He pointed to the construction of “sovereign” institutions in the Wadi al-Joz neighborhood, including branches of the Ministries of Interior and Social Affairs and the national headquarters of the Israeli police.
Tafakji concluded that “the Israeli side is working to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, as if it is saying to the world that Jerusalem is indivisible and will remain the capital of the Hebrew state with no Palestinian partner.”
