Occupied Jerusalem -

With a budget of $15.5 million, the Israeli occupation government announced in mid-2018 the launch of a land registration and settlement project, within the sectors targeted by its five-year plan.

The project aims to register 50% of the lands of East Jerusalem until the end of 2021, and to complete the settlement of the status of the remaining lands until the end of 2025.

At the time, former Israeli Minister of Justice Ayelet Shaked claimed that working on the settlement would facilitate the construction process for Jerusalemites and provide them with housing solutions.

However, the Jerusalemite researcher Hanadi Al-Qawasmi explained that this project aims to strengthen the occupation’s control over more Palestinian lands in the city, especially since the registration of lands east of Jerusalem in the Land Registry (Tabu) stopped after the completion of the occupation of the city in 1967. The specialists estimate that 5- Only 10% of the land was settled and registered in the Tapu.

The registration freezes led to a situation in which property was fragmented, and owners were distributed between Jerusalem and outside, which means that providing valid identification papers - from the Israeli point of view - is a difficult task for the Palestinians to prove their right to their lands.

An image showing lands from the town of Tyre Baher, south of Jerusalem, confiscated for the purpose of building an Israeli settlement (Al-Jazeera)

The Nightmare.. Absentee Property Circle

Al-Qawasmi says: “If the Jerusalemites fail to prove this right, these lands will become subject to Israeli control, especially from the Department of the Absentee Property Custodian, and the start of settlement processes means, in one way or another, the registration of large areas of land for the benefit of the Israeli government, or for the benefit of associations. settlement or Jews claiming land ownership in Jerusalem.”

The occupation authorities did not complete the registration of 50% of the lands until the end of 2021, as stipulated in the plan, but they began an attempt to implement it during the year 2021 with a rush.

Perhaps the most dangerous event occurred last April, according to al-Qawasmi, when the occupation authorities settled the property dispute over the plot of land known to Palestinians as “Al-Naqqa’ Land” in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, and registered it in the name of Jews claiming ownership before 1948.

With the registration of ownership of this land number (30821) in the Land Registry for Jewish owners, the danger of eviction of the 45 Palestinian families living in it has increased.

The researcher says that “the registration process in the name of the Jewish owners took place almost secretly, and the Palestinian residents living in the neighborhood were not informed about this procedure, and we now see clearly that the settlement of the lands is taking place in favor of the stronger party, and that the project aims to completely opposite what was announced as it seeks to rob more of Palestinian lands and their displacement.

The city of Jerusalem also witnessed the repercussions of this last December, when Salem’s family in Sheikh Jarrah received an Israeli notification asking them to vacate the house claiming ownership of the settlers, which opened a new front of confrontation in the neighborhood, before the family’s lawyer could obtain a judicial order to freeze the eviction. .

The Jerusalem researcher expects that Jerusalemites will witness during the current year 2022 the announcement of the opening of new files to settle lands in the city, likely to include areas claimed by Israeli authorities (such as the Jewish National Fund) and who say they bought them before 1948.


Palestinian confusion

Although, during the past months, a number of Palestinian human rights organizations began warning of the dangers of the project, and indicated that its full implementation threatens to confiscate nearly 60% of Palestinian property in Jerusalem, there is a Palestinian confusion in dealing with this Israeli measure.

It seems - according to al-Qawasmi - that the announced reactions to him are rejection, but on the field level, there is no clear national reference that carries an action plan that can unite the people around it, and lead them to refuse to deal completely with this project.

This was confirmed by the coordinator of the Civil Coalition for the Defense of Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem Zakaria Odeh, who said that after a series of meetings held and during which lawyers, engineers and institutions spoke, a Palestinian presidential position was issued calling on Jerusalemites not to deal with the settlement project.

Commenting on this position, Odeh said that it is not sufficient and does not solve the problems of Jerusalemites, especially since all those who applied to the occupation municipality to obtain building permits last year were asked to settle their lands, and thus Israeli institutions are using different methods to force the residents to resort to the settlement process.

Zakaria Odeh: The settlement project does not solve the problems of Jerusalemites and its goal is to rob the remaining Palestinian rights in Jerusalem (Al-Jazeera)

In moving to confront this project, Odeh indicated that the coalition and the Adalah Center for Human Rights sent letters to each of the legal advisor to the Israeli government, the Minister of Justice and the (Israeli) Land Registration Department, to demand that the project be frozen or not at least not implement the Absentee Property Law, but all parties did not respond to the request. these claims.

Odeh says that approximately 60% of land and property owners in Jerusalem do not live in the city at the present time, due to their dispersal and dispersal of their properties after the occupation of the eastern part of it in 1967. Therefore, the application of the Absentee Property Law will have serious repercussions on the remaining Palestinian properties in the city.

Odeh concluded his speech to Al Jazeera Net by saying that Israel aims, through the land registration and settlement project, to rob the rest of Palestinian property and rights in Jerusalem, because it currently controls 87% of them, and by implementing the project, it will prepare the 13% allocated for the construction of Jerusalemites in the city, describing this as "" property massacre.

The head of the Supreme Islamic Council, the blessed preacher of Al-Aqsa Mosque, Ikrima Sabri, had urged, a few days ago, Jerusalemites to register their property as an “endowment land” (endowment land, but it is inherited for generations in the family), to cut off the way for the occupation authorities to interfere in its ownership, and to protect it from plunder, whether its owners reside inside Palestine or outside it.