market.181 As such, although Bethlehem continues to receive millions of visitors, 85 percent of visitors spend no more than a few hours in the city; approximately two hours at the Church of Nativity, and one stop at a souvenir store.182 Palestinian sites, if visited at all, end up being quick additions to Israeli tours that in some cases would include visits to Israeli-Jewish colonies. This allows Israel to control the political and cultural narrative of Bethlehem, and Palestine more generally, preventing Palestinians from sharing their identity, culture, perspective and exposing the reality of Israeli suppression and domination.183 Each of these mechanisms combined are part of a greater Israeli aim to fulfill its plans and vision for ‘Metropolitan Jerusalem,’184 extricating the city from Palestinians, and altering the demographic and geographic balance in strong favor of Israeli-Jewish colonizers, in order to construct an image of Jerusalem as the ‘undivided’ capital of Israel.185 By sabotaging all forms of Palestinian transport, these measures work to disconnect Palestinians from their political, cultural, religious and economic capital, which in turn serve the greater objective of slowly eroding the collective identity of the Palestinian people and their ability to exercise their right to self-determination. The isolation of Bethlehem: A Palestinian bantustan As with all major Palestinian cities in the West Bank, the Oslo Accords represented a significant step in the fragmentation and ghettoization of Bethlehem.186 With 181 Clarno, supra 5, 101-102. 182 This statistic was obtained from an interview with an official from the PA Ministry of Tourism in September 2012. See Clarno, supra 5, 101. See also PLO - Negotiations Affairs Department, supra 157. 183 PLO – Negotiations Affairs Department, Ibid. 184 The Metropolitan Jerusalem plan’s aim was to expand Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries to a 100 km radius, incorporating the large Palestinian centers of Ramallah and Bethlehem into Jerusalem, thereby carving into a large portion of the central West Bank and jettisoning the possibility of a viable Palestinian state from the outset. See BADIL, supra 165, 5. 185 Ahmad el-Atrash, “A Trip through the Palestinian Road Network,” This Week in Palestine, Issue no. 168 (April 2012), available at: http://www.twip-archive.com/archive/details. php?id=3673&ed=205&edid=205 [accessed 28 February 2020]. 186 From when the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993 to the end of 1998, over 22,000 dunams [22 km2] were confiscated from the Bethlehem governorate, with many of these dedicated to both the building of colonies and bypass roads. This loss of land further fragmented Palestinian towns and villages, inhibited organic Palestinian growth, and undermined Palestinian agricultural efforts. POICA - Monitoring Israeli Colonization Activities, “Israeli Settlements Encroachment in the Bethlehem District,” prepared by ARIJ, 15 May 2001, available at: http://poica.org/2001/05/israeli-settlementsencroachment-in-the-bethlehem-district/ [accessed 28 February 2020]; Jeremy Pressman, “The Second Intifada: An Early Look at the Background and Causes of Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” Journal of Conflict Studies 22, no. 2 (2003), 114-141, available at: https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/jcs/ article/view/220/378 [accessed 28 February 2020]. 54