Har Homa to the outlying colonies of Tekoa, Nokdim, Ma’ale Amos and Asfar in the south. Construction of the road resulted in the confiscation and appropriation of 19,000 dunams (19 km2) of land in the Bethlehem governorate for the benefit of 2,000 Israeli-Jewish colonizers residing in this cluster at the time, significantly reducing their journey to Jerusalem from 40 minutes to around 10 minutes.218 Za’atara is one of the villages most dramatically affected by this bypass. Following Oslo, the primarily agricultural town suffered the loss of control of its land, with 99.1 percent of it categorized as Area B, C or as nature reserves and remains highly vulnerable to creeping de jure annexation.219 With most of Za’atara’s population having already experienced forcible displacement due to the construction of the Tekoa and Nokdim colonies,220 these villagers have experienced additional loss of their land to Israeli colonial infrastructure projects. Before the establishment of the [Route 398/Liebermann] bypass road, it took us around 2 minutes to walk to our land, and now it takes us around 15 minutes to get there. …The next generation will not be able to build in this area anymore - like with my children, the only place where they can live is in the same house with us. Hopefully the situation will change, and we are always seeking solutions ... No one knows where my son will live in the future, because we don’t have any other place to go and our house is in Area C. …The cars drive on the street throughout the day and night it doesn’t stop we never feel comfortable. The children cannot go next to the road because it’s very dangerous, and even if we want to go to our land, we go as a group, not alone. Um Ali, housewife from Za’atara Interview: Za’atara, 4 November 2017 218 Peace Now, “Developing Roads = Developing Settlements: Lieberman Road – Case Study” (2015), available at: http://peacenow.org.il/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/leiberman-road-report.pdf 219 ARIJ, “Za’atara Town Profile” (2010), available at: http://vprofile.arij.org/bethlehem/pdfs/VP/Za'tara_ tp_en.pdf 220 Zaatara town was established in 1966 with the residents originating from At Ta’amreh, a region covering all of the eastern countryside of Bethlehem, that had been home to a Bedouin community whose lands were largely lost to the site colonized with the Nokdim and Tekoa colony cluster. See Mohammad Hamdan, “Palestine Blog: The town of Zaatara east of Bethlehem” [Arabic], blogpost, 3 January 2017, available at: https://bit.ly/2RxO8am [accessed 28 February 2020]. 61