OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)
The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research issued a new policy analysis paper under the title “From Bab al-Silsila to Khan al-Ahmar: Re-engineering the environs of Jerusalem.” It provides an in-depth analytical reading of the most dangerous field developments witnessed by Jerusalem and its surroundings during May 2026, placing these developments in their broader strategic context.
The paper monitored a remarkable field synchronization between two incidents that occurred within close days: the Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich signing the immediate eviction order for the Khan al-Ahmar Bedouin community located east of Jerusalem, and the occupation authorities approving the plan to seize homes and commercial shops in the Bab al-Silsila neighborhood adjacent to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the heart of the Old City.
The center believes that this synchronization does not represent a coincidence, but rather embodies a systematic strategy operating on two parallel levels at the same time: suffocating the historical and religious center from within, and dismantling the Palestinian geographical surroundings from without, thereby establishing what the center terms the “regional structural control system.”
Figures translate the scale and depth of the plan
The paper documented the scale of demographic transformations accumulated over decades, as the number of settlers in the West Bank and Jerusalem together reached approximately 746,000 settlers by the end of 2023, while the residency of more than 14,700 Jerusalemites was revoked from 1967 until 2021.
The paper revealed that the E1 settlement plan, which had remained frozen since its approval in 1999 on an area of 12,000 dunums between Jerusalem and the Ma’ale Adumim settlement, received its final approval in August 2025, turning from a suspended project long considered an “international red line” into an actual construction workshop on the ground. In the same context, since the current government took office, the occupation authorities have approved 41,709 settlement housing units in the West Bank, a figure that exceeds what was approved in the preceding six years combined.
International pressure produces acceleration, not freezing
The paper highlighted a highly significant political implication in the timing of Smotrich’s decision, as it came after the prosecution office at the International Criminal Court submitted a secret request to issue an arrest warrant against him on charges including forced displacement, apartheid, and crimes against humanity.
The center believes that this timing reveals a dangerous shift in the equation of international influence: external pressure no longer produces a freezing of Israeli plans as was customary in previous stages, but rather produces an acceleration of them and a rush to implement what was postponed, which necessitates a reconsideration of the mechanisms of international pressure adopted until now.
A new analytical model: The strategic triad
The paper presented an analytical model explaining the mechanism of Israeli policy operation in Jerusalem through three integrated axes: controlling the entrances and vital arteries leading to the Old City and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, engineering the rural peripheries demographically through displacement and isolation, and closing the vital geographical corridors linking the northern West Bank with its south via the E1 plan.
The center believes that these three axes work together as one integrated system and not as separate measures, and that understanding them in isolation from one another misses the unifying strategic logic between them.
Conclusions and recommendations
The paper concluded that the current events represent a qualitative transition from the stage of building favorable conditions to the stage of accelerated implementation that is difficult to reverse, warning that continued international silence will not only mean condoning the violation of the rights of a specific community, but will also mean implicit participation in redrawing the map of the region for decades to come.
The center recommended a set of practical measures, most notably: employing the International Criminal Court warrants as a regular and continuous pressure lever rather than as an isolated exceptional event, linking any regional arrangements and partnerships to halting geographical decisiveness projects in Jerusalem and the West Bank, and intensifying systematic field documentation and submitting it to international bodies concerned with international humanitarian law.
The full paper is available on the official website of the center: https://pcps.ps/?p=2872.