10/30/2024–|Last updated: 10/30/202408:01 PM (Mecca time)
Haaretz newspaper said that 139 Palestinian residents of occupied East Jerusalem fear losing their lands, which they have lived in for decades and possess ownership documents, after they were surprised by the decision to register them in the name of a Jewish institution.
The newspaper reported that the residents of Umm Tuba were surprised – after one of them applied to the Jerusalem municipality to obtain a building permit – that there was a decision to register their land in the name of the “Jewish National Fund.” This theoretically means that this organization can in the future demand the eviction of the place from its owners.
The area of the land is estimated at 20 dunums, and its residents lived there for decades and built their homes on it, but they were completely unaware of the existence of a procedure requiring it to be registered, and they assured Haaretz that no one contacted them to notify them of that.
Land registration
Since 1967, the Israeli authorities have stopped registering lands in occupied East Jerusalem. As a result, real estate transactions have not been restricted at all, in addition to the fact that the authorities do not keep records detailing the identity of landowners there, according to what the Israeli newspaper reported.
One of the results of this was also that many residents built their homes on the land they owned without registering it with the Land Department.
But the residents of Umm Tuba – unlike many neighborhoods in East Jerusalem – were issued building permits after the municipality inspected their lands and confirmed that they were the real owners.
Residents say they can even produce British and Jordanian documents proving their right to the land, as well as the tax bills they have paid to the Jerusalem municipality for decades.
The residents said that the official in charge of real estate regulation at the Ministry of Justice, David Rotenberg, told them that the “Jewish National Fund” bought the land 100 years ago from 5 residents, but “this area is not owned by 5 residents, and the family that they claim bought the place did not own any land in the area at all.” “, one resident tells Haaretz.
After residents contacted him to inquire, Rothenberg responded that they should have checked the government website to find out whether the settlement of the block in which their homes were built had begun, but the residents told HaAtz that the site was in Hebrew, a language that many of them do not master.
The ministry’s real estate regulatory official also claimed that ministry employees roamed the area to place notices, something residents deny.
As for the Palestinian families’ lawyer, Yazid Kawar, he stated that there is no demarcation of land plots and blocks in the disputed area, which means that the residents would not have understood, even if the alleged notices had existed, that the matter was related to the land on which their homes were built.
Last week, residents filed a petition with the Supreme Court to cancel the registration of the land in the name of the “Jewish National Fund.”
Suspicious plan
Land registration began in East Jerusalem in 2018 according to a plan that the government claims is to alleviate urban planning chaos in the region, but the plan is met with suspicion by Palestinian residents who fear that its goal is to confiscate their lands and register them in the name of Jews.
Haaretz notes that most of the Ministry of Justice’s activity was actually devoted to registering “blocks” that include lands owned by Jews or where a Jewish neighborhood is planned to be built.
As for the real estate regulation of Umm Tuba, it was requested by another department in the ministry related to the project to build a new Jewish neighborhood called “Nobi Rachel,” located just meters away from Palestinian homes in Umm Tuba on land owned by Jews in the last century. It is one of 4 Jewish neighborhoods located behind The Green Line, and it was planned in advance in coordination between the real estate registration official in the ministry and right-wing activists.
It is worth noting that when the International Court of Justice expressed its legal opinion that the Israeli presence in the West Bank was illegal last July, it referred in its ruling to land registration procedures in East Jerusalem.
She said that her goal is to expand settlements at the expense of other lands in the occupied part of the city, which will put pressure on the Palestinians there and force them to leave.
