Expansion plan highlights crowded West Bank city's plight

QALQILIYA, West Bank (AP) — Last year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government quietly passed one of its most significant concessions to the Palestinians: a plan to alter the West Bank map and turn over a small chunk of Israeli-controlled territory.

But after an uproar by Israeli settler leaders, the government appears poised to cancel the move – a decision that could upset nascent U.S. efforts to restart peace talks and take away a rare piece of relief for the residents of this overcrowded city.

As the West Bank's most densely populated Palestinian city, Qalqiliya has been eagerly awaiting implementation of the Israeli plan that would allow it to double its size by expanding into land that has until now been off-limits.

"We desperately need this plan because of the density," said Mayor Hashem al-Masri. "It will be a catastrophe if we can't expand. It will feel like someone is trying to drive us out of our city."

The fate of Qalqiliya, which lies along the de facto Israeli border and is surrounded on three sides by Israel's separation barrier, touches on one of the conflict's thorniest issues: the battle over the 60 percent of the West Bank known as Area C.

Under interim peace accords reached two decades ago, Area C remained under full Israeli control, and Israel has repeatedly rejected calls to allow large-scale Palestinian development there.

These restrictions have made life difficult for Qalqiliya's 53,000 residents, who live on slightly more than 1.5 square miles of land. Because of the separation barrier, the only way it can expand is east – into privately owned Palestinian lands in Area C where Israel has barred construction. The plan calls for building more than 14,000 new housing units, an industrial park, playgrounds, a waste management plant and a cemetery.

Qalqiliya has been among the quietest cities in the West Bank, and has even been singled out by Israel's nationalist defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman, as a model. Its planned expansion is one of the flagships of Lieberman's "carrot-and-stick" policy toward the Palestinians.