Restrictions Land Confiscation on Use and Access Introduction 75 Pupils won't be able to reach their schools by foot and will be forced to use an alternative route, which is much longer and will require transportation. The same is the case for neighbors and relatives who will be divided by the new road. Court Case Prior to the court case, there were negotiations between the Community Council of Beit Safafa and the Municipality of Jerusalem, which lasted for almost two years (2010-2012). We discussed with the Mayor, the engineers, employees from the Ministry of Transportation and the company responsible for the construction of the highway. We suggested a tunnel under the village instead, but all of the negotiations were worthless. At that point, we hired an architect who conducted three alternative detailed plans and we suggested them to the Municipality before appealing to the court. Unfortunately, all three plans were formally rejected. We decided to issue an administrative appeal to the District Court, we demanded that the Court abort the building permissions (for the road) and we obliged the Municipality to make a detailed plan. The Court should soon decide whether to accept the appeal and freeze the construction works until having a detailed plan, or to reject the appeal. For us, if the appeal will be rejected we will appeal to the Israeli Supreme Court.270 According to our lawyers, there were illegal procedures made by the Municipality including: 1. Absence of a detailed plan and a local outline plan required by law and, which subsequently facilitated the loss of the residents’ right to object, 2. Residents of Beit Safafa do not have access to the road, 3. The road will be a highway (unlike mentioned in the former plan), 4. No alternatives were offered to the residents. In parallel action to the court case, we are carrying out diverse forms of popular resistance to the plan of road No. 50. We established a popular committee whose role is to coordinate our struggle as well to support the legal action. We conducted demonstrations in the village in front of the Municipality and at the construction site. Additionally, the Parents Committee issued a one day school strike because the movement of pupils to schools will be severely affected by the road. Moreover, we established a protest tent where people from the village, journalists, solidarity groups, politicians and representatives of organizations can come for discussing the issue of the road. We also use social media as an instrument to advocate our struggle, but the most important issue is that we were able to raise awareness about the issue among the residents in Beit Safafa because at the beginning most of them didn’t have any idea about the real consequences of the road. 270 Update: The District Court rejected the people of Beit Safafa’s appeal on 10 February 2013, so an appeal was issued to the High Court but on 20 March 2013 the Israeli Supreme Court rejected the administrative appeal made by them.