Israel opens 'settler-only' road covered in barbed wire in Bethlehem

Israeli forces on Monday opened a settlers-only road on Palestinian land in a village near the occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem, according to Palestinian Authority's news agency Wafa.

The road runs through the Palestinian village of Wadi Fukin to the west of Bethlehem.

The head of Wadi Fukin village council, Ibrahim al-Horoub, said the road is 300 metres long and has barbed wire placed on both sides of it to prevent Palestinians from entering.

The road is adjacent to the illegal Israeli settlement of Tzur Hadassah.

The West Bank, which has been occupied by Israeli forces since the 1967 Six-Day war, is home to nearly 600,000 Jewish settlers, living in communities deemed illegal under international law.

In March, Professor Michael Lynk, the UN’s Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories said Israel’s control over the West Bank and Gaza Strip amounts to apartheid.

"With the eyes of the international community wide open, Israel has imposed upon Palestine an apartheid reality in a post-apartheid world," Lynk said in a report published in March.