Israel’s government has approved a plan to allow land registration in the West Bank for the first time since 1967, a move that opponents say paves the way for annexation of the occupied Palestinian territory.
Allowing land registration processes would permit Israel to irreversibly determine ownership of land in the West Bank. Such “settlement of land title” processes were frozen by a military order after Israel occupied the area in 1967. Sunday’s approval clears the path for that order to be lifted.
The approval comes a week after Israel’s far-right government revealed measures to it easier for Israelis to buy Palestinian land in the West Bank and for the state to exercise more control over sensitive religious sites at the expense of Palestinian authorities.
A statement from Israel's ministers of justice, finance and defence said “the decision means, among other things, the registration of extensive areas in the West Bank that belong to the state in the name of the state”, The Jerusalem Post reported.
“The renewal of land settlement in Judea and Samaria is an essential security and governance measure designed to ensure control, enforcement, and full freedom of action for the state of Israel in the area,” Defence Minister Israel Katz added, referring to the West Bank by the Biblical term used in Israel.
The Palestinian Presidency said the move was a “grave escalation” that “signals the beginning of the implementation of annexation plans”.
Israeli anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now, which supports a two-state solution, called Sunday's move “historic”.
“The government decided today on a land registration process in the West Bank, effectively amounting to an Israeli takeover of approximately 83 per cent of Area C (about 50 per cent of the West Bank)", the group said on X, referring to areas of the West Bank administered by Israel under the Oslo Accords.
“Any land Palestinians cannot prove ownership of under the state’s strict evidentiary requirements – and they won’t be able to – will be declared 'state land',” the group said.
The pro-settlement organisation Regavim welcomed the decision, saying that it “clarifies to our enemies there is a landlord for the lands of the nation”.
“These decisions should be viewed in the broader context of the current government’s policy to promote annexation of large areas of the West Bank,” Michal Braier, chairwoman of the Israeli human rights organisation Bimkom, told The National.
Ms Braier said that the “million-dollar question is when do these registrations now start happening”.
Once the 1967 military order is cancelled, procedures would need to be put in place to allow the processes to commence, she said, although the timeline remains unclear.
She pointed to the government's allocations of funds in December to undertake settlement of land titles in the West Bank as evidence that substantive plans are being “worked on”.
Ms Braier said the way land settlement processes have been undertaken in East Jerusalem, which, unlike the West Bank, is fully under the control of Israeli law, “stand as a stark warning sign” for the West Bank, because less than one per cent of decisions in East Jerusalem have led to land being registered to Palestinians.
“This is not rule of law, it’s apartheid law, cementing a regime that works only for Jews and dispossession for Palestinians,” she said.
The vast majority of the international community and major legal bodies have long deemed settlements illegal. Despite this, successive Israeli governments have continued to expand them. The policy is a priority for many in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition, which contains many settler extremists.
Settlements are now home to hundreds of thousands of Israeli civilians, a reality that is widely considered one of the main impediments to the future of a Palestinian state, which remains the preferred route to ending the Israel-Palestine conflict for most of the international community.
Last week’s decision sparked widespread condemnation from Arab and western states, who called on Israel to respect Palestinian territorial rights. The US also reiterated its opposition to annexation of the West Bank.
