JERUSALEM, February 3, 2026 (WAFA) — The Jerusalem Governorate warned on Tuesday of an Israeli occupation decision to complete the settlement and registration of all lands in occupied Jerusalem in the Israeli land registry by the end of 2029.
The governorate described the move as the most dangerous settlement step since the occupation of the city in 1967, marking a shift from gradual land confiscation to a final, documented seizure of ownership in favor of the occupation state and its colonial institutions.
According to a statement issued by the governorate, the new decision No. 3792 constitutes a continuation and direct escalation of Decision No. 3790 issued in 2018, which was included under a plan to “reduce social and economic gaps in East Jerusalem,” while in essence serving as an organized colonial project to impose Israeli land settlement laws and full Israeli sovereignty over the occupied city.
The governorate said the land settlement project represents a blatant circumvention of international law applicable to occupied territories, including Jerusalem, which prohibits the transfer of private property into public ownership and forbids depriving protected population of their property.
It said the application of this law leads to the displacement of Palestinians from their homes and the loss of their lands, actions classified under international law as war crimes and clear violations of international humanitarian law.
The statement stressed that Palestinians in Jerusalem now face an imminent threat to their presence in their homes and on their lands, not due to a lack of actual ownership, but because of the impossibility of proving ownership under coercive Israeli conditions. Most Palestinian homes in Jerusalem are built on lands whose registration procedures were halted after 1967, leaving ownership recorded under ancestors' names or in Jordanian records not recognized by the occupation authorities.
Through this legal mechanism, homeowners are turned into “unauthorized occupants,” while land registration is completed in the name of the occupation, followed by eviction orders, demolition notices, or irreversible transfers of ownership that cannot later be challenged.
Since the launch of the land settlement project in 2018, around 50 land blocks in various parts of Jerusalem have been completed, covering a total area of approximately 2,000 dunums and 300 square meters. The results, according to the governorate, clearly reveal the project's colonial objectives, with about 85 percent of the land registered in the name of settlement neighborhoods, settlements, or transferred to the ownership of the occupation state and its public bodies, while only about 1 percent was registered in the name of Palestinian owners from Jerusalem.
The governorate noted that the danger of the new decision is compounded by the expansion of the powers and budgets of settlement committees and the strengthening of partnerships with the Custodian of Absentee Property, turning it into an official partner in implementing the project. This, it warned, opens the door to the widespread application of the Absentee Property Law to thousands of properties, particularly in cases where heirs reside outside Jerusalem or Palestine or where families are unable to present ownership documents recognized by Israeli authorities.
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