blocs, fragmenting and isolating them through time-consuming detours and restricting their access to their own agricultural land. At the same time, roads were built to ensure colonizers could travel to and from their residences without going through Palestinian inhabited areas and communities. “When you search for an Arab village, you will find it within settler communities... a significant example of this is the town of Beit Safafa which is located in southwest Jerusalem as well as the town of Silwan where houses here and there continue to be confiscated. As a result, the town will essentially consist of a group of houses surrounded by settlements blocs.” Khaleel Tafakji, Palestinian Land and Settlements Expert111 Since publishing its Settlement Master Plan, Israel has developed numerous and evolving road plan strategies, all with the same intent. • Road Plan 50 (1984): this plan captures Israel’s intention to construct a purpose-built, fully integrated network of roads.112 Although not fully implemented yet, this plan calls for the “development of high demand areas by creating accessibility to settlement areas,” and places “special emphasis on paving convenient roads for new settlements located in the metropolitan areas of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.”113 Road Plan 50 was the first plan that explicitly articulated Israel’s intention to deliberately shift the road construction in Palestine from a north-south axis to an east-west axis.114 • “Intifada bypass” road plan (1990): this plan evolved with the emergence of the First Intifada (Arabic word for uprising) and focused on bypassing Palestinian areas under the guise of security and protection of colonizers. This accelerated the reorientation of the West Bank road system with around 100 km of bypass roads paved in 1990 alone.115 • The Oslo Accords (1993 and 1995): although not a specific road system 111 Muhammad Ali Fakih, “Palestinian Expert for Al-Mayadeen: ‘Israel’ Encourages the Spread of Drugs Among Palestinians in Jerusalem” [Arabic], al-Mayadeen, 30 March 2019, available at: https://bit. ly/2PSotsO [accessed 28 February 2020]. 112 Geoffrey Aronson, “New Israeli Road Plan Paves Over Hopes for a Palestinian State,” Middle East Institute, blogpost, 23 February 2017, available at: https://www.mei.edu/publications/new-israeliroad-plan-paves-over-hopes-palestinian-state [accessed 28 February 2020]. 113 Meron Benvenisti and Shlomo Khayat, “The West Bank and Gaza Atlas,” Jerusalem Post, 1988, 34, cited in Jad Issac et al., Assessing the Impacts of Israeli Movement Restrictions on the Mobility of People and Goods in the West Bank (Jerusalem: ARIJ, 2019), available at: http://www.arij.org/files/ arijadmin/2019/mobility_2019.pdf. 114 Issac, supra 114. 115 Ibid. 36