Since Israel’s illegal annexation of East Jerusalem following the 1967 War, also known as the Naksa, Palestinians have faced tremendous discrimination in the city’s planning and building sector. Now, the adoption of a new protocol has further restricted residential development in Palestinian neighborhoods.

In their new report, Israeli planning rights group, Bimkom, and Ir Amim, an Israeli organization monitoring Jerusalem policy, reveal that a change in regulations has resulted in Israeli authorities approving zero plans on unregistered land in 2023 and only advancing six in 2024.1

Most of the land in East Jerusalem’s Palestinian neighborhoods is unregistered private property (see Land Settlement and Registration in Jerusalem), a situation exacerbated by the fact that Israel froze all land registration from 1967 until 2018. With Israeli planning institutions rarely drawing up building plans for Palestinian areas, Palestinian landowners took it upon themselves to initiate their own plans. From 2018 to 2022, approximately an average of 100 Palestinian-promoted plans were approved per year with the help something called the “Mukhtar Protocol.” This protocol allowed for a private plan to be filed if it had the consent of a mukhtar (the accepted head of a village or neighborhood), even though the land was not officially registered. Thus, it provided a sort of loophole in acknowledgment of the situation on the ground. In late 2022, however, this protocol was replaced with a new regulation that requires full proof of land ownership for building plans to be submitted.2

Jerusalem Story spoke with one of the report’s authors, Sari Kronish, an architect at Bimkom, to learn more about this new protocol and how it is obstructing Palestinian plannning and building.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Jerusalem Story: What is this new protocol and how does it work?

Sari Kronish: According to [Israel’s] Planning and Building Law, in order to promote a private plan, it’s necessary to prove connection to the land as part of the planning process. In the past, there was a protocol that was called the Mukhtar Protocol which basically allowed for a lenient interpretation of this term—connection to land—and required that people bring community approval vis-a-vis community representatives that are called mukhtars. There were some problems with this, but we must recognize that it was the only way that plans on private land in East Jerusalem were able to move forward.

And at the end of 2022, the [Jerusalem] District Planning Committee published a new protocol, in effect, canceling this old protocol. And the new protocol demands that people prove full-fledged ownership.  This is a very stringent interpretation of the term “connection to land”, basically limiting it to full-fledged and official ownership as opposed to a more broader understanding, including living on the land for many years. The new protocol requires the same documents that are required as part of the Settlement of Land Title [SOLT] process, even though these are separate processes—SOLT is under the Ministry of Justice and the planning processes are under the Ministry of Interior.

What has happened is that the planning institutions have lost their independence. They are now completely subjugated to SOLT processes that have been reinstated in East Jerusalem. They were frozen since 1967 and reinstated in 2018 [via Decision 3790]

JS: The report focused on how SOLT is very integral to this new protocol, but when Israel renewed Government Decision 3790 five years later by passing Government Decision 880 in 2023, 880 was focused less on SOLT. So, does that mean this new protocol has less of an impact now?

SK: These are all sort of separate, parallel things that are going on, and you’re right to try to understand how they’re related. First, 3790 was a five-year plan that budgeted a lot of money for closing socioeconomic gaps in East Jerusalem and renewed the SOLT process for the first time. Then five years later, under 880, they didn’t include SOLT, but what they did include was housing units for the first time, and said, we need to approve 2,000 housing units per year.

This was somewhat of a pleasant surprise, but the question is whether or not it's implementable. Now, the fact that they didn’t include SOLT in [Decision] 880 doesn’t mean that they’re not doing SOLT; it just means that they were budgeting it separately.

The new protocol is linked to SOLT, but I would say that it’s important to keep in mind that the new protocol is also preventing the implementation of 880. That is the 2,000 housing units a year that the government said need to be approved cannot be approved if this new stringent protocol isn’t changed.

JS: How does this new protocol impact the housing crisis in East Jerusalem?

SK: The new protocol in planning is relevant on a specific category of land, which is called unregistered or untitled land. This is land that has never been officially registered in the state land registry. This is most of the land in East Jerusalem where previously Palestinians were making most of their attempts to promote plans. So, this [protocol] closed a very vital—although not sufficient—door. The protocol is only relevant for Palestinians, because other categories of land are either state land or registered land of which there is very little in East Jerusalem. Certainly, settler activity in East Jerusalem does often take place also on this category of land that is unregistered, but it’s done together with the state. And once the state is involved, this sort of circumvents a lot of the time that’s needed to prove ownership.

I’ll give an example. One of the things that SOLT is doing is it’s allowing for the planning of new settlements in East Jerusalem after many years of a status quo in which the settlements that have been built are the settlements that exist and are being constantly expanded. And the discrimination is that you can only build in the settlements and not for Palestinians. But now, we see planning being promoted for new settlements in East Jerusalem on swaths of land where SOLT was also promoted. So, this is one way that even the land reserves, places where Palestinians have not yet built, are being confiscated—through this process for the construction of new settlements as opposed to using land reserves to alleviate the housing crisis for Palestinians in East Jerusalem.

Another example is what we’ve seen in [the Palestinian neighborhoods of] Beit Hanina and Um Tuba, where SOLT is being promoted on land where Palestinian homes stand. And the concern is that this could lead to more evacuations from homes as a result. We haven’t yet seen people who have been told to leave their homes because of SOLT, but what we’re seeing is that the land is being confiscated underneath [Palestinian] people’s homes.

JS: Is there anything else you want to add about this new protocol and its effects?

SK: Everything we just talked about is related to the planning process, which preempts the ability or inability to receive building permits. We’ve seen a slowdown in [request of] building permits too, [because] a similar protocol is in place in the building permit track that is now causing similar problems and leading to a slowdown. In addition, we are already seeing a considerable slowdown in the approval of private plans as a result of the freeze in the opening of planning files, and we are concerned this will lead to a similar freeze in the approval of building permits. If files are not opened—whatever the track may be—there will be nothing in the pipeline to approve.