West Bank & Jerusalem
Israel's Civil Administration speeds weekly West Bank land registration
Graphic: Times of Palestine
Original Reporting
Land in the occupied West Bank now changes hands through a documented sequence of administrative steps — declaration, planning, tender, road-building and designation — that in 2024 and 2025 ran at the fastest rate recorded since the Oslo Accords, according to figures published by Peace Now, the European Union and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The first step is the declaration of "state land." Peace Now reported that on 29 February 2024 the Custodian of Government Property in the Civil Administration declared 2,640.3 dunams in the villages of Abu Dis and el-Azariya as state land, followed by 8,000 dunams on 20 March, 170 dunams near Herodium, and 12,700 dunams in the Jordan Valley on 25 June.
Peace Now's annual review recorded 24,258 dunams declared as state land in 2024, which it described as approximately half of all land declared since the Oslo Accords. The European Union's 2025 settlement report put the following year's figure at 25,959 dunams, also describing it as nearly half the total declared since the Oslo process began — the two characterisations cannot both hold, and neither publication sets out the running total on which it relies.
The legal mechanism is narrow. Peace Now says that under the Israeli interpretation, uncultivated land is treated as having no owners, while in practice Palestinian owners exist whose title is recorded only in property tax books because Land Registry registration was suspended by Israel. Owners may object: when 10.37 dunams of Burin village land were declared in November 2024 to legalise a cemetery built unlawfully at Yizhar in the late 1990s, landowners were given 45 days to appeal to an Appeals Committee. How many appeals have succeeded does not appear in the material published by these organisations.
The declarations sit alongside seizure by facts on the ground. A joint report by Kerem Navot and Peace Now, "The Bad Samaritan," found that settlers had used shepherding outposts to take at least 786,000 dunams — 14 per cent of the West Bank. The EU report records 185 new outposts established in 2023–2025, roughly 130 of them farm outposts and hilltops.
Planning is the second step, and its control changed hands. A draft government decision reported by Haaretz in February 2023 provided for splitting the Civil Administration from COGAT, appointing a civilian at its head within 60 days, and creating a Settlement Administration concentrating powers transferred to Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, including the regularisation of outposts. The Hebrew outlet Makor Rishon reported that Smotrich separated civilian services from the military system, moved powers to the Settlement Administration headed by Yehuda Eliyahu, and for the first time had a civilian, Hillel Roth, appointed deputy head of the Civil Administration with responsibility for settler affairs and land management; it noted that the Higher Planning Council consequently began meeting regularly and that thousands of dunams were declared state land. Times of Israel's Arabic edition reported the lawyer Michael Sfard's observation that while the head of the Civil Administration is a military officer under army command, Roth is a civilian answering to Smotrich. Al Jazeera reported that the outgoing Central Command chief, Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fuchs, had circulated a document to senior officers warning against emptying the Civil Administration of its powers.
The effect on throughput is measurable. Peace Now recorded that plans for 9,884 housing units were advanced in 2024, and that in November 2024 a June 2023 government decision took effect under which advancing settlement plans no longer required approval from the political echelon; the Higher Planning Council then met weekly and approved nearly 2,400 units in six weeks. For 2025 Peace Now recorded 14,623 units approved for deposit and 15,371 for validation, 27,941 in total, more than double the previous annual record. Tenders in 2025 covered 9,629 units, more than the previous six years combined, with over 6,700 in Ma'ale Adumim.
Palestinian applications move the other way. Citing Israel's Planning Council, the Norwegian Refugee Council reported that of 282 permit applications submitted in Area C since October 2023, none had been approved, and that Bimkom found only 24 of 2,550 applications approved between 2016 and 2021 — under 1 per cent. The same publication, citing OCHA, recorded 1,288 structures demolished for lack of permits between January and September 2025, against 929 in the same period of 2024, displacing 1,414 people.
E1 shows the chain completed. Peace Now reported that the Higher Planning Council gave final approval to 3,401 units in E1 in August 2025, two weeks after objections were heard, and that petitions by Palestinian residents and by Ir Amim, Peace Now and Bimkom were filed in the District Court, which refused to freeze progress. The Times of Israel put the number of units approved by the Civil Administration at 3,412. Peace Now also recorded a NIS 3 billion development agreement signed with the Ma'ale Adumim municipality in September 2025, and NIS 335 million allocated in March 2025 for a road between al-Ezariya and az-Za'ayyem that would reroute Palestinian traffic and close about 3 per cent of the West Bank to Palestinians.
Designations do parallel work. B'Tselem lists military orders, state land declarations, firing zones, nature reserves and expropriation as the official means of takeover, and a calculation by Kerem Navot for B'Tselem found settlers from one Jordan Valley farm had taken 14,979 dunams, about two-thirds of a nature reserve. No current total for firing-zone acreage appears in the published material reviewed.
The International Court of Justice held on 19 July 2024 that Israel must immediately cease all new settlement activity and repeal measures maintaining the situation. Adalah wrote in February 2026 demanding cancellation of the land-titling decision, which implements a May 2025 cabinet resolution allocating NIS 244 million to resume registration frozen since 1968, arguing registration is an inherently sovereign act; ministers have described the same measures in their own words as "de facto sovereignty".
Peace Now said the E1 tender was set to open on 1 June 2026 and close on 6 July, with the court hearing on 15 June 2026. No ruling has been published. The Foundation for Middle East Peace reported in February 2026 that the defence minister said he was working with the prime minister to retroactively legalise 140 farming outposts; whether that is executed is unresolved.
