2.2.1. Major Arterial Roads: A Tool of Segregation and IsraeliJewish Investment Israel has intentionally transformed transportation infrastructure into assets that create dual-spatial configurations through networks that run entirely along racial lines. This has meant the effective redesign of these networks politically and symbolically as tools of Israel’s colonial project. Infrastructure has been used to rearticulate space in ways that serve as a source of connection for one group, but also as a means of disconnection, discrimination and domination of another group.97 1948 Palestine land: Renovation and construction of infrastructure The implementation of a road infrastructure system was explicitly pursued and designed by Israel to reflect that of a settler-colonial state. 98 This in turn entrenched Israeli-Jewish presence in Mandatory Palestine and simultaneously divided Palestinian areas into discontinuous enclaves, ensuring and reinforcing the exclusion and segregation of the colonized people for the ultimate objective of erasing Palestinian existence in Palestine. Historically, road construction focused on connecting JNF-built colonies to other key areas in order, to enable rapid and heavy investment in these areas and to establish the illusion of Jewish indigeneity to the land. For instance, by 1948, the JNF had appropriated 975,000 dunams (975 km2) in the Naqab and established some 35 colonies concentrated particularly around Beersheba. It also erected colonies in the Galilee, around Jerusalem, and on the ruins of Umm Khalid village (now named Netanya).99 These areas directly correlated to the areas where Israel’s initial road projects were focused, namely construction of a Netanya-Tel Aviv Highway,100 and a highway connecting Beersheba with Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.101 Within six years of its creation, 97 Ibid. 98 Arieh Sharon, Architect Director, Planning Department, Government of Israel and author of the first National Outline Plan, Tama 1, writes and references several setter-colonial states, Australia and the Americas, when explaining his planning design. See Ariel Sharon, “Planning in Israel,” The Town Planning Review 23, no.1 (1952). 99 “Jewish National Fund, “About KKL-JNF – Our History – Fifth Decade: 1941-1950,”” webpage, available at: https://www.kkl-jnf.org/about-kkl-jnf/our-history/fifth-decade-1941-1950/ [accessed 28 February 2020]. 100 Tel Aviv was built in 1909 on a number of demolished Palestinian villages adjacent to Yaffa. See Walid Khalidi (ed.), All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948 (Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2006), 683-724. 101 International Reference Service, Economic Review of Israel 1949, vol. VII (October 1950), available at: https://bit.ly/3b3jlJS [accessed 28 February 2020]. 33