“The landfill is planned for here,” Palestinian Walid Hamad told Jerusalem Story,1 pointing to an open stretch of land next to his home in the village of Qalandiya 10 kilometers north of Jerusalem and 4 kilometers south of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.2 “This is the area where they want to throw the trash.” Currently, one part of the land is planted with olive trees, and the other has several homes that were demolished in 2016.

Hamad and his extended family of 35 have been living adjacent to the Israeli Separation Wall, which was built here in 2011.

On October 23, 2025, the Israel Land Authority (ILA), a governmental body in charge of managing state land, delivered expulsion orders to his family for their two apartment buildings, saying the land is now state property, and they must vacate in 20 days so Israel can build a waste treatment facility here.3

“[They told us,] ‘You are illegal here. You need to leave or go to the courts,’” Hamad said. As many as seven residential buildings are affected by the orders; the two Hamad buildings include 10 apartments. The order also confiscates about 150 dunams of agricultural lands belonging to two dozen family members cultivated with olive trees.

The ILA visited the Hamad family once, before the notices, in June 2025, and requested to see their land deeds (see The Complex and Unresolved Status of Land in East Jerusalem). The Hamad family gathered their papers and then took their British Mandate-era paperwork as well as their 1936 deed from the Israeli land registry, the tabu, to the ILA offices.

Yet those documents aren’t enough to save them from expulsion.

The family is now appealing the orders to the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court. Thus far, the family was able to secure a 75-day expulsion freeze as they await a court hearing.4

“We’re trying to extend it as long as possible, so hopefully [the ILA] doesn’t come without any notice and just demolish,” Hamad said. Ironically, the family managed to successfully appeal to the courts when the Separation Wall was being built to reroute it away from their lands, using their strong claims to ownership. Now the state has returned, trying to take the property under different pretenses.

In June 2024, Israeli officials told the Jerusalem Municipality’s development company Eden to locate a site for a facility that would convert waste into reusable energy. The waste incineration plant would burn material such as plastic, paper, and plant residue to generate electricity.5

The firm chose a roughly 32-acre area of land in Qalandiya, north of Jerusalem. While the land is located within Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries, it is on the side of the wall that adjoins the Ramallah municipality, a large Palestinian urban area, and away from Israeli Jewish settlements.6 Much of the land is cultivated.

When Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967, it seized Qalandiya village and then extended the municipal boundaries of East Jerusalem far to the north, enfolding part of the village into the newly expanded East Jerusalem and dividing it (see What Is Jerusalem?). Later, in the mid-1990s, the Oslo Accords again divided the village among jurisdictions: The center of the village, about 72 dunams, was designated as Area B, falling under joint Israeli security control and Palestinian Authority (PA) civilian control, while a larger area of 500 dunums is designated as Area C, under sole Israeli military control.7 So in effect, the village was split into three different jurisdictional zones over the years.

Furthermore, when the Separation Wall was built here in 2011, its route left 40 percent of the Qalandiya village lands and 13 houses on the Israeli side, “inside” the Jerusalem municipal boundary.8 At that time, in response to a petition, the Supreme Court ordered the state to install metal gates in the wall that operated for several hours a day so villagers stranded on that side could reach their own land. Eighteen months later, the gates were sealed. Thereafter, villagers living on the “Jerusalem” side of the wall had to drive 11 kilometers to the Jib checkpoint and then pass through it and drive on back to their lands instead of walking 300 meters.9

Under this regional labyrinth, some residents carry Israeli permanent-resident ID cards (entitling them to reside legally in Jerusalem), but most—like Hamad—only have a PA ID, meaning they can’t pass to the Jerusalem side of the wall without an Israeli-issued military entry permit.

Qalandiya is also the location of the West Bank’s most notorious checkpoint, a massive gate and wall structure through which tens of thousands of Palestinian pass daily, screened and harassed by Israeli soldiers and checkpoint personnel. It adjoins an airfield that was formerly the Jerusalem Airport operated in Jordanian times, and also the Atarot Industrial Zone, an Israeli settlement. Plans have existed for decades to develop a residential Israeli settlement on the airfield, but except for gradual increased Israeli development in the area, no construction of any such settlement has commenced yet. The waste treatment plant would directly adjoin this future settlement and also impact the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who live, work, and traverse this congested area.

The Atarot Industrial Zone is already one of the most polluted areas in the country.10

Nearly a year after Eden proposed the Qalandiya location for the waste plant, in May 2025, Israel formally selected it as the waste treatment center site and decided to reroute the wall so the area designated for the plant would fall closer to Jerusalem.11

Relocating the wall means more land could be confiscated, roughly 27 acres that have been owned by 25 Palestinians since before Israel was founded in 1948. Olive groves surround the apartment buildings slated for evacuation and these, too, are expected to be cleared for the wall and landfill. Additionally, the apartment buildings will be demolished, as stated in a letter from the head of the Israeli military’s Central Command: “Existing structures near the current route must be removed, and no new construction permitted. Before changing the route, all buildings located between the current and proposed lines must be cleared to avoid enclosing Qalandiya residents on the Israeli side.”12

When the wall is moved, given their history, residents are understandably skeptical that an access point to enter and exit through the eight-meter-high structure will be made available to them.

In another effort to clear this region, in 2016, Israeli authorities “issued an administrative order, and in 24 hours every house that wasn’t being lived in was demolished, without a court hearing,” says Walid Keishi, head of Qalandiya Village Council. At that time, a dozen homes not far from the Hamad apartments were demolished for being built without permits. There are other homes that continue to be threatened with demolition, and their cases are moving through the courts.

“There was a lot of noise [about the demolitions]. So they started handling each home one at a time,” Keishi added.

Residents who own land that lies on the Ramallah side of the wall but is enclaved within the Jerusalem municipal boundaries often build without applying for ultimately impossible-to-obtain Israeli permits, hoping that eventually this land would become part of a Palestinian entity. The extreme overcrowding in central East Jerusalem makes this an attractive option, especially for families whose members hold a mix of Israeli (Jerusalem) and PA (West Bank) IDs, despite the risk that the homes might one day be demolished by the city. Palestinians holding Israeli permanent-resident IDs must prove that their “center of life” is within the boundaries of the Jerusalem Municipality or risk losing their residency status (see Precarious Status).

In order for the expulsion orders to be implemented, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich signed a notice under Section 19 of the Israeli Land Ordinance in April 2025 activating decades-old expropriation orders for land in Qalandiya. An August 30, 1970, order covers the area where the waste plant will be located, and a June 1, 1982, order designates it for security purposes.13

The Israel Land Ordinance (Acquisition for Public Purposes)—1943 is a British Mandate-era law Israel adopted in order to confiscate land for government and public needs. However, it’s become one of the main avenues Israel uses to seize Palestinian land, specifically for building Jewish settlements, such as in the Upper Nazareth region.14

In 2010, Israel’s Knesset passed an amendment to this law allowing the state not to return confiscated land, even if it hasn’t served its intended purpose. The state has the power not to use the confiscated land for its original purpose for 17 years. The amendment also expands the definition of “public purposes” for confiscated land to include building new towns or expanding existing ones. It also permits the finance minister to change the original purpose of the confiscated land if the initial goal of the seized land hasn’t been achieved.15

Originally, when these expropriation orders were issued, most of the land was used to create the Atarot Industrial Zone and an Israeli military base adjacent to Qalandiya village on the other side of the wall, while the rest remained privately owned Palestinian land.16 Yet with a stroke of a pen, Smotrich revived the old orders to now confiscate the area in Palestinian hands under a new designation.

“It’s a rare tool [that Smotrich has used],” Yonatan Mizrachi, Settlement Watch project codirector at the Israeli movement of Peace Now, told Jerusalem Story.17 “So many years have just passed, so how come you’re doing that? It’s unusual. Smotrich doesn’t really operate in East Jerusalem—he’s more focused on the West Bank.”

“To use it now, again, shows just how problematic [the law] is,” Mizrachi added.

But for Hamad, Israel’s goal in confiscating this land is clear.

“Israel wants all this land to be part of Jerusalem. This is the plan,” Hamad said. “To annex it into Jerusalem.”

And absorbing the area into Jerusalem also means cleansing it of Palestinians—fulfilling Israel’s goal of both expanding Israeli territory and ultimately erasing Palestinians from the land.