Pursuant to the Oslo Accords, the West Bank is divided into three parts: Area A, administered exclusively by the Palestinian Authority (PA); Area B, administered jointly by the PA and Israel; and Area C, which remains under Israeli control. In violation of the Accords, the PA with EU help has been trying to influence the outcome of future negotiations by building in Area C. The victims of this policy are those Palestinians who must live in the new settlements, which could also turn into a launching pad for terrorist attacks, as Hillel Frisch writes:
The PA and EU’s major objective is . . . to create continuous Arab settlement from the south to the north of the West Bank.
Israel would like to prevent that contiguity by building [alongside the E-1 highway, which] would create continuous [Israeli] settlement from Maaleh Adumim to Jerusalem. But as Israeli building dwindles into insignificance under the stern gaze of Uncle Sam, . . . the PA, with the help of the EU, has succeeded in housing 120,000 Palestinians in a space no larger than nine square kilometers. This number is more than double the number of inhabitants of Maaleh Adumim and the other Israeli localities in the area. . . .
Most of this area is within [Jerusalem’s] official municipal line and is thus formally under Israeli sovereignty. The remainder is Area C, which Israel [also] presumably controls. Yet hundreds of six-to-ten-story apartment buildings were built there, all of which are illegal, as a senior officer in the Border Police in charge of security in the area confirmed. This officer and Jamil Sanduqa, head of the makeshift local council of Ras Khamis, [one of the settlements] supported by the PA and the EU, would both agree . . . that these neighborhoods are a humanitarian disaster. Sanduqa characterizes living there as “life imprisonment.” . . .
Israel might be making the same error it made between 1996 and 2002 when it allowed the PA to encroach on areas B and C, for which it paid a very high price during the second intifada.
Read more on BESA Center: http://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/abcs-judea-samaria-towards-breakdown/