Israel froze land registration when it occupied East Jerusalem following the 1967 War, also known as the Naksa.
“The situation of land in East Jerusalem since 1967 is that it’s not registered in the Israeli land register [Tabu],” Tatarsky said. “So, there is no formal proof recognized by Israeli authorities as to land ownership.”
This changed in 2018 when Israel’s government renewed the land registration process in East Jerusalem under Decision 3790, a state initiative claiming to improve socioeconomic development for Palestinians in East Jerusalem. However, the way the process was executed disadvantaged Palestinians as Israeli and settler groups began to register Palestinian property as their own.
In fact, Ir Amim has decried this land registration drive as a “grand land theft,” since it largely, if not exclusively, serves the objectives and interests of the government and the settler organizations whose primary aim is to seize Palestinian property and “redeem” it for exclusive Jewish ownership and use.“The Israeli authorities did land registration in a way that Palestinians actually risked losing their land,” Tatarsky said.
The majority of East Jerusalem hasn’t been approved for residential development because the land isn’t registered, meaning residents can’t obtain licenses to build. This isn’t the case, though, for Umm Tuba, where residents were granted building permits.
“Because there is no land registry in East Jerusalem, Palestinians cannot, when they ask for a permit, prove that they are the owners,” Tatarsky said. “So, because of that, they go through a different process, which is they need to prove that they have linkage to the land, which is something more vague and not as strong as ownership.”