Israel had built and renovated 543 km of highways and 303 km of feeder roads to agricultural colonies, and widened a further 931 km of roads. This facilitated the rapid construction of some 36,000 centers and 102 agricultural colonies from the Galilee to Jerusalem in under two years.102 All of these measures combined consolidated Zionist colonization of the land.103 While Israeli-Jewish presence was solidified through road construction and connectivity, Palestinian cohesiveness was dissolving through the intentional exclusion of surviving Palestinian communities from the Israeli zoning and planning system. In 1949, Israel’s restoration of the JaffaJerusalem railway line included a diversion around the large Palestinian town of Tulkarm, and the creation of a new station on the northern outskirts of Tel Aviv, to service mostly Israeli-Jewish populations.104 More recently, the Trans-Israel Highway or Highway 6, whose construction began in 1999, has achieved the desired segregating and isolating effect. Misleadingly described by Israel as designed to allow for efficient transportation between the northern-most and southern-most parts of the country by effectively bypassing Tel Aviv’s congestion,105 it does more than just exclude Palestinian communities. Eighty-five percent of the land that has been confiscated or will be confiscated at a later stage of construction belongs to Palestinian landowners.106 This constitutes both a substantial reduction in the land owned by Palestinians and a significant constraint on the natural growth of Palestinian communities and connections between them. In fact, Highway 6 illuminates Israel’s ultimate strategy to interconnect the whole of Mandatory Palestine. Aside from the obvious north-south connection that this highway creates, it also creates an east-west connection as it intersects with all Israeli roads running between the West Bank and what 102 Israel Digest’s report in 1954 reports that while “one fifth of all new immigrants now secure their livelihood from agriculture […] less than 1 percent of these immigrants were employed in agricultural pursuits before coming to Israel.” Israel Digest, 24 May 1954, available at: https://bit.ly/3a5TrnP [accessed 28 February 2020]. 103 Ibid. 104 International Reference Service, supra 102. 105 As of today, the highway’s length is 170 kilometres, but it “will eventually extend to a length of 260 kilometres, from the Negev Junction [al-Naqab] area in the south to the area of Shlomi [which is an industrial zone built on the Palestinian demolished town of Al-Bassa] in the north.” Ministry of Finance, “Highway 6 – Project Description,” webpage, available at: https://mof.gov.il/en/InternationalAffairs/ InfrastructuresAndProjects/Projects/Pages/Project_Highway6.aspx [accessed 28 February 2020]. 106 Jeff Halper, cited in Alessandro Petti, “Asymmetries: The Road Network in Israel-Palestine,” 25, available at: http://www.decolonizing.ps/site/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/petti-a-asymmetries. pdf [accessed 28 February 2020]. 34