In the name of infrastructure, Israel is laying tracks for deeper occupation. A controversial new light rail route, the “Brown Line”, is set for review by Israeli planning authorities next week, raising alarm among Palestinians who see the project as another attempt to entrench illegal settlement control over occupied East Jerusalem.

The proposed line would snake from the Atarot industrial settlement in the north to Sur Baher in the south, carving through several Palestinian neighbourhoods, including Ras al-Amud, Beit Hanina, and Damascus Gate. Beneath the technical language of urban development lies a political strategy: to sever East Jerusalem from its Palestinian surroundings and weave it ever tighter into Israel’s settlement matrix.

The Jerusalem Governorate condemned the plan as a tool of annexation, designed not to serve the city’s residents, but to erase its Palestinian identity. Far from offering equal transit access, the Brown Line, like other rail projects before it, appears crafted to serve settlers while bypassing or fragmenting Palestinian communities.

Palestinians know that bulldozers and blueprints can be as dangerous as bombs. Every kilometre of track, every station built on occupied land, chips away at the city’s Arab character and the hopes of any future Palestinian capital in Jerusalem. This is not transportation. It is territorial conquest on rails.