Land and Space
Land
In Jerusalem as in the rest of the country, land is the core of the locus of the struggle for control. The primary aim of Zionism pre-statehood and Israel since 1948 has been to acquire and keep as much of the land as possible without its indigenous inhabitants. Here we explore the status and disposition of land in Jerusalem and its environs.
Featured in This Topic
The city and the settlers forge ahead with land registration in Jerusalem as a means to dispossess Palestinians in areas of interest.
Three Bedouin communities face one more effort to displace them as Israel confiscates Palestinian land.
Residents of Wadi Yasul share their daily lived realities as targets for intended erasure from the landscape.
An ever-shrinking island between settlements
The land lease deal between the Armenian Patriarchate and the Jerusalem municipality, concluded in secrecy, is now in the courts.
The team from Xana Capital Ltd. tried to stake its claim to a large area of the Armenian Quarter by force in the wake of the Patriarchate’s filing of intention to cancel a controversial land lease deal.
The Armenian community’s concerns escalate over repeated police interference on the ground without legal authorization.
The founder and director of the Israel Land Fund, Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem Arieh King, describes the fund’s goals in his own very explicit and unequivocal words.
Palestinian landowners were crushed when Israeli officials refused to authorize a neighborhood on their own land—the first in East Jerusalem since 1967.
Israel manipulates the complex reality of land settlement and registration in Jerusalem, and Palestinians must understand and confront it.
Israel froze modern LSR in East Jerusalem in 1967. In 2018, it reversed this policy in an open attempt to strengthen its sovereignty over the contested area.
Israel uses the 1950 Absentees’ Property Law and several amendments to it to confiscate Palestinian property across East Jerusalem and give it to Jewish settlers.
An overview of the labyrinthine status of land in East Jerusalem and its implications
A legal analysis of the legality and likely motivation behind Israel’s resumption of land registration procedures since 2018
The Story in Numbers
26.3
Number of sq km, out of a total area of East Jerusalem (70.7 sq km, as it was unilaterally expanded by Israel in June 1967) that Israel has confiscated; this represents about 37 percent [1]
3.43
Number of km sq of Jerusalem land excised by the Separation Wall [2]
18
Number of Israeli land laws used to confiscate Palestinian land since 1948 [3]
100
Percentage of public land in Jerusalem registered as state land by Israel, to be managed by the Israel Land Authority (a body that until recently was not allowed to sell any land, only lease it) [4]
40
Percentage of East Jerusalem area that is used for built-up Jewish settlements [5]
40
Percentage of private Palestinian land that was lost to Palestinian Jerusalemites and used to build settlements [6]
51
Number of years the Israeli government has frozen the modern land settlement and registration process in East Jerusalem. The process, which follows the modern Torrens title system, legally confers land ownership through title, not deed, enhancing the owners’ rights to the land. [7]
80,000
Annual amount in NIS that the 51-year-old freeze on land registration in East Jerusalem has cost Palestinians per household ($23,000). The freeze has not allowed Palestinians to buy or sell land. [8]
90
Percentage of the land in East Jerusalem that has not gone through the modern land settlement and registration process, easing Israel’s ability to confiscate Palestinian properties and hand them over to the state. [9]
Notes
[1] Rassem Khamaisi, The Complex and Unresolved Status of Land in East Jerusalem.
[2] David Koren, “Arab Neighborhoods beyond the Security Fence in Jerusalem,” Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, January 17, 2019.
[3] Rassem Khamaisi, “Shrinking the Palestinian Space,” internal paper drafted for Jerusalem Story researchers. Dr. Khamaisi is a professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Haifa. He is an urban and regional planner and geographer.
[4] Khamaisi, “Shrinking the Palestinian Space.”
[5] Khamaisi, “Shrinking the Palestinian Space.”
[6] Khamaisi, “Shrinking the Palestinian Space.”
[7] Khamaisi, Land Settlement and Registration in East Jerusalem.
[8] Ma’ayan Nasher, “Illegal Building, Bloodshed, Conflict, and Two Billion Shekels per Year: The Price of Non-registration of Land in East Jerusalem” [in Hebrew], Jerusalem Institute for Policy Studies, 2018.
[9] Rassem Khamaisi, interview with the Jerusalem Story Team, November 4, 2022.