After decades of freezing East Jerusalem land registration, Israel restarted the registration process in 2018 and now aims to complete it by 2029. While Israel claims this is for the benefit of Palestinians, experts warn that Israel is actually exploiting this mechanism to confiscate more Palestinian land.

On January 18, 2026, Israel approved “Government Resolution No. 3792 for the Registration and Settlement of Land Rights in East Jerusalem,” which requires the state to complete land registration on all land in East Jerusalem by the end of 2029.1

According to Ir Amim, an Israeli nonprofit monitoring Jerusalem policy, the decision budgets NIS 30 million (about $9 million) between 2026 and 2029 to determine land rights in East Jerusalem via settlement of land title (SOLT),2 the process of formalizing land ownership.

“When a normal state is advancing settlement of land title, it’s advancing it for its citizens (or Jerusalem residents)—investing it for the people so that they can register their rights. So, in a normal environment, the settlement of land title is a good thing, but what’s happening in East Jerusalem is that they’re not doing it for the benefit of the residents,” Gaal Yanovski, a SOLT researcher at Ir Amim, told Jerusalem Story.3 “They’re doing it for the benefit of the state and for settler projects.”

After Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, the state froze the modern process of land registration, which was started by Jordan before 1967 to replace the customary and religious land registration method of the Ottoman, British, and Jordanian periods. Freezing the land registration process left 90 percent of East Jerusalem land unregistered, creating an urban development crisis for the occupied territory. Today, obtaining mortgages and building permits has become nearly impossible for Palestinian residents.

In 2018, Israel issued Government Decision 3790, ostensibly designed to “reduce socioeconomic gaps and advance economic development in East Jerusalem,” and allocated funds to improve education, employment, civil services, and health over five years. In particular, the decision budgeted NIS 50 million ($16 million) to register land in East Jerusalem into the tabu (see Land Settlement and Registration in East Jerusalem).

Israel claimed the government’s plan would boost development to an area long plagued by discrimination, but a joint report by Ir Amim and Israeli planning rights group Bimkom found the opposite to be true. Instead, Israel is using SOLT to confiscate more land from Palestinians by registering it to the state or settler groups, often unbeknown even to the Palestinian land owners.

“The state really used some of this money to advance its goal of showing sovereignty in East Jerusalem—enhancing the Israeli control over East Jerusalem,” Yanovski told Jerusalem Story.

The new resolution is the first government decision dedicated specifically to promoting SOLT in East Jerusalem. As part of Resolution No. 3792, the Custodian of Absentee Property (which oversees property seized from Palestinians who are declared “absentees” under the 1950 Absentees’ Property Law) has been tasked with carrying out SOLT with a budget of NIS 600,000 (around $190,000).4 Hannanel Gurfinkel, a settler himself, is in charge of operations at the Custodian of Absentee Property. Previously, at the General Custodian (which oversees East Jerusalem property seized on behalf of Jews who owned it before 1948 under the 1970 Legal and Administrative Matters Law), he promoted expulsions of Palestinians in the neighborhoods of Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan, and the Old City.

“Israel is [designating] more positions—through the decision—for Gurfinkel’s branch, so that he will have more workers with whom to advance the seizure of land in Jerusalem,” Yanovski said.

Even in cases where Palestinians are not defined as absentees, proving their ownership is difficult under the Israeli system. Many Palestinian landowners have documents originating from the Ottoman or Jordanian periods that Israel does not recognize. For instance, this is the case in Batn al-Hawa, where Palestinian residents purchased their homes under Jordanian rule (before 1967) so their ownership papers are Jordanian. Israeli courts have agreed that the land was legally purchased but ruled that Israel’s 1970 Legal and Administrative Matters Law means the property is endowed to Jews and must be handed over to them.

“Palestinians know that if they make a claim, then the Custodian of Absentee Property can check it, and then he can find during the chain of ownership transitions somewhere [that] someone was an absentee . . . and register [the property in] his name or on the name of the authority that he transfers the lands to,” Yanovski said. “This is now the biggest fear regarding settlement of land title, because Palestinians find themselves in a catch-22.”

So far, SOLT has been completed in 50 blocs of land covering 2,300 dunams (about 569 acres) in East Jerusalem. These are mostly open areas or lands next to Palestinian neighborhoods. An overwhelming majority of the land—80 percent—has been registered to state entities—including the Custodian of Absentee Property, General Custodian, Jewish National Fund (JNF), and the municipality of Jerusalem. About 5 percent has been registered to Jews in both private and commercial capacities and only 1 percent to Palestinians.7

“This is shocking. Palestinians are 40 percent of the population of the city and they don’t deserve any of the pie?,” architect Sari Kronish at Bimkom told Jerusalem Story.8

In the areas where SOLT has been completed, eight new settlements are underway comprising some 20,000 housing units—the largest of these is Atarot, where 9,000 units are planned for the site of the former Jerusalem airport in the Qalandiya neighborhood (see Settlements).9 Construction has not yet begun on most of these settlements, except for Givat Hamatos, which is adjacent to the Jerusalem village of al-Walaja.10

“The current concern around SOLT stems from a closer look at the blocs in progress (an additional 6,000 dunams [around 1,480 acres] or so). Here, the overall picture is reversed. Most of the area underway includes blocs where Palestinian homes exist,” Kronish wrote. He added that the main neighborhoods affected are Beit Hanina and Shu‘fat along Ramallah Road, in Wadi Hilweh and Silwan south of the Old City, and in and around Sur Bahir.11

In the neighborhoods of Umm Haroun in Sheikh Jarrah, Umm Tuba, and Musrara, SOLT has been completed where Palestinian homes are already located.12 In both Umm Haroun and Umm Tuba, SOLT was done without the residents’ knowledge and registered to Jews and the JNF, respectively (see Jewish National Fund Secretly Registered More than 100 Palestinian Homes as Its Own). Families in both areas now face the threat of expulsion.

At its core, SOLT is about making a final determination about land rights—doing so, however, is in direct violation of international law.

“Advancing settlement of entitlement in East Jerusalem is completely opposed to international law and to the laws of occupation,” Yanovski said. “It’s a final process . . . It’s almost impossible afterwards to object to the facts that are now in the registrar. And that is exactly what an occupier shouldn’t do. An occupier should manage the property for the profit of the protected persons, and they shouldn’t do anything final . . . nor transfer the property to the occupiers.”