Hundreds of Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem are about to be made homeless as the Israeli government begins its initial excavations for a new road project, running 11 km, and aiming to connect settlements in the occupied West Bank to Jerusalem itself.

The “American road” will see 57 Palestinian homes demolished, according to lawyers fighting the land confiscation orders, and will cast about 500 people out of those homes, so that the settler-only road can be built where the houses now stand.

Those 500 Palestinians won’t be the only ones immediately effected, however, as in ensuring the road is “Israelis only,” the government intends to wipe out all other roads in the connecting area, leaving substantial parts of Palestinian neighborhoods geographically disconnected, with no roads they’d be permitted on being even hypothetically allowed.

This is adding to controversy surrounding the road scheme, which appears to have deliberately planned to bisect Palestinian neighborhoods to allow more houses to be seized, and which was expanded far beyond the width of the road itself with an eye toward hypothetical future settler-only light rail.