While Canada is preparing to recognize a Palestinian state, some in the West Bank fear that it is too late
Anas Samir, a father of four 42-year-olds, cuts a discouraged silhouette while he sowed himself in front of the store where he sells grocery products in the Palestinian city of Al-Eizariya, just outside Jerusalem.
He spent years looking at land of land that the Palestinians had hoped that one day could be part of an independent state which takes place in the service of the colonization company old decades of Israel.
The latter impact personally.
Last month, he and dozens of others along the main entrance to the city were informed by the Israeli army that the demolition orders would soon be applied.
“All this will go,” he said, referring to the plans recently approved by the Israeli government to extend the neighboring Jewish colony of Ma’Ale Adumim towards Jerusalem.
All colonies in the territories occupied by Israeli are considered illegal under international law. But the planned expansion of Ma’Ale Adumim is particularly controversial, in particular because the Israeli government has boasted, it will bury the idea of a Palestinian state – as a country such as Canada Prepare to recognize a at the United Nations General Assembly next week.
“This is a reprisals, in a way, to the announcement of Canada and other Western states,” said Palestinian lawyer Hiba Husseini in an interview in her law firms in Ramallah, a city of the West Bank occupied by Israeli.
“(He) sends a strong message to the West:” If you recognize the state of Palestine, it’s really unrelated to us on the field. We do what we want to do because we control this country. “”
“Each decision … designed to undermine the solution to 2 states”
The expansion of Ma’Ale Adumim will include a plot of land of 12 square kilometers known as E1 between the colony and East Jerusalem.
Israel captured Jerusalem-Est and the West Bank of Jordan in 1967, later annexing East Jerusalem, in a decision not recognized by the international community.
Today, Ma’Ale Adumim is one of the largest Israeli colonies in the West Bank, which houses 40,000 residents.
Its mayor, Guy Yifrach, calls for the decision to extend it to include E1 Strategic.
“I hope that one day there will be an arrangement that Ma’Ale Adumim will be part of Jerusalem and the State of Israel,” he said in an interview with CBC News.
The Palestinians say that Israeli expansion will cut the East Jerusalem of the West Bank and more fragment the Palestinian communities, which makes an impossible state in East Jerusalem.
The E1 plan has been on books for decades, but in the past, the international community – including the United States – had repeatedly convinced Israel to put it aside.
But the war in Gaza and the support of the Trump administration embarked on Jewish nationalists last in the cabinet of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has repeatedly promised to prevent a Palestinian state.
“Each decision, each rule, each step they make is designed to undermine the two -state solution,” said Husseini, who was a member of the Palestinian negotiation team during Oslo peace discussions in the 1990s, who ultimately collapsed with each side blaming the other.
She and former Israeli negotiator Yossi Beilin still work on new proposals for a two -state solution, a joint project which they call the Confederation of the Holy Land.
“It is designed for a period after Mr. Netanyahu and the extreme right,” she said. “Because, in fact, they are not even ready to talk about a two -state solution.”
Despite the criticisms that the recognition of a Palestinian state is only symbolic, Husseini thinks that it is always important.
“It is a change. And it is a declaration that the world no longer accepts that Israel is undergoing the solution to two states, undermines the resolution of this conflict.”
Israel gave final approval to extend one of the largest Jewish colonies in the occupied West Bank. The mayor of the colony wants this to be part of Jerusalem while the nearby Palestinians fear being cut off from East Jerusalem.
The Palestinians fear that it is too late
But many Palestinians fear that recognition is too late, especially since Israel is advancing with what many call a de facto annexation of the West Bank.
There are already more than 700,000 Jewish settlers living in East Jerusalem and in the West Bank. In May, Israel approved 22 new colonies.
Not all Israeli colonists live on occupied land for ideological reasons. Some are there because housing is often cheaper and subsidized by the government.
But the violence against the Palestinians by the hard settlers – who believe that the earth is theirs on the right given by God – has increased considerably since October 7, 2023, the attack led by Hamas against Israel.
Between 2022 and 2024, the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli settlers or forces went from 154 to 498, according to the United Nations Bureau for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The Israeli army has also moved around 40,000 Palestinians from their home to decades refugee camps in cities like Naplus, Tulkarem and Jenin.
Israel said he was targeting Palestinian militant groups.
Many Palestinians living in East Jerusalem or in the West Bank are reluctant to speak of their own concerns given the continuous devastation in Gaza and the murder of more than 60,000 Palestinians there, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
But the horror of what is happening in Gaza also grants fears among the western bankers on what could then come for them, in particular given the feeling of turbo to the expansion of the Israeli colony.
An uncertain future
Samir, the father of four in Al-Eizariya, has already faced an uncertain future. He lost his first company in the old town of Jerusalem in the early 2000s, after Israel built a wall between Al Eizariya and Jerusalem.
Israel called him a security barrier, built more than two decades ago during the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, when Palestinian activists launched a series of attacks inside Israel. The Palestinians call it an apartheid wall and a earth intake.
With his identity document in the West Bank, Samir could no longer go to Jerusalem for his work. Now, he said, he has lost everything again.
“We don’t know where we have to go. It’s over.”
Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank say that the Israeli settlers’ tactics have become more extreme in the past year. Margaret Evans and a team of news from the CBC went to the hills of the southern Hebron to better understand what it is to live in the shadow of these illegal colonies.
Although he can welcome Canada’s decision and others to officially recognize a Palestinian state – that it may – he does not believe that it will actually change anything for him or the Palestinian people.
“For Netanyahu, it is (bigger) Israel, and we cannot live here,” he said.
Another veteran negotiator for the Palestinians during Oslo peace talks, Khalil Toufakji, says things are now, a viable Palestinian state is simply impossible.
“It is like Swiss cheese,” he said describing the various cantons in which the Palestinians were divided by Israeli control points, appropriate land, barriers and bypass roads reserved for colonists.
He says that a viable state could still be recoverable, however, by exchanges of negotiation and field, but only with a serious commitment from the countries now ready to recognize a Palestinian state.
Now, he said, not tomorrow.
Husseini, Ramallah’s lawyer, believes that the international community must be ready to introduce economic sanctions against Israel if it does not change course.
“When you allow hundreds of thousands and millions in Gaza to be hungry in front of the vigilant eyes of the world, I think that requires significant steps.”
Husseini thinks that the only way for Israelis and Palestinians is the two -state solution.
“The Palestinians will not disappear. The Israelis are not going to disappear. And we have to find a way,” she said.
“It seems eccentric today because the conflict has been raging for so long and because animosity is at a very increased level and there is so much distrust. But we hope. This is why we continue to work there.”
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