Today (23/12/24), the High Court accepted the petition of Peace Now and ruled that from now on, the state will be obligated to publish in advance any intention to allocate land outside the boundaries of settlements, including in cases of renewing old allocations and in cases of absentees’ property.
Since 1967, the state, through the Civil Administration’s Custodian for Government and Abandoned property, has allocated more than 680,000 dunams of public land, transferring them to various entities, without any tender process, without publication, and without providing the public with an opportunity to file objections. Peace Now petitioned the High Court demanding that land allocations be published and open to objections. Following a previous petition by Peace Now, the state committed to publishing only a small portion of land allocations, so Peace Now submitted another petition, and today the High Court accepted the petition and ruled that almost all allocations outside the settlement boundaries must be published in advance.
Peace Now: The court issued a red card to the government today and ruled that the time has come to stop the lawlessness and the distribution of land in the dark. For 57 years, the State of Israel has done whatever it wants with land in the Occupied Territories, with no transparency and outside the rules of proper administration. As a result, 99.76% of the land allocated by Israeli authorities in the Territories has been allocated only to Israelis, while almost nothing has been allocated to Palestinians. This statistic is one of the reasons Israel is accused of maintaining an apartheid regime in the territories. If there had been minimal transparency in the government’s actions in the Territories, it is possible they would not have dared to act in such a discriminatory and blatant manner.
Read the ruling, in Hebrew (HCJ 2174/21).
The Petition for Transparency in Allocations
According to Israeli law, when the state wishes to allocate land to an entity, the authorities are required to hold a tender and allow the public to compete for the right to receive the land. However, in the Occupied Territories, since Israeli law does not apply, there is no obligation to issue a tender or even publish allocations, contrary to the rules of proper administration. In this situation, it is no surprise that 99.8% of the land has been allocated to Israelis, while less than 0.3% has been allocated to Palestinians.
In 2015, Peace Now petitioned the High Court demanding that all allocations in the Occupied Territories be published in real time and that the public be given the opportunity to file objections. This petition proceeded slowly, and after four years and several hearings, the state announced that from now on, allocations would be made publicly, and a procedure for publication was established. The court was satisfied with this, and the petition was dismissed.
However, the allocation publication procedure left most allocations in the dark. The procedure only applies to new allocations outside settlement jurisdiction and does not apply to a long list of exceptions that essentially nullify the commitment to publish allocations. Indeed, a check by Peace Now shows that since the publication of the procedure in November 2018, only a handful of allocations have been published. Most allocations continue to be made without publication.
In March 2021, Peace Now filed a new petition through lawyers Michael Sfard and Alon Sapir, demanding that the procedure be amended to apply to all allocations. On April 7, 2022, a hearing was held on the petition, and on April 10, 2022, a Decree Nisi was issued.
Today, the High Court has decided to accept the petition partially and annulled the most significant exception in the procedure—publishing the renewal of allocations. The state argued that when it renews an old land allocation to the same entity, it is a technical process, and there is no need to publish it. According to Peace Now’s estimation, most of the land allocations carried out today are actually renewals of old allocations that were made in the past, mainly allocations given to the Settlement Division over the years and renewed periodically.
The court accepted the petitioners’ argument and ruled that even in cases of renewal of allocations, publication is required. Judge Fogelman summarized this as follows:
“It has often become clear that it was not possible to allocate the land… [and that] the allocation was made unlawfully… The factual and legal complexity of the lands in the area, together with the significant differences in how they are managed compared to properties in Israel, leads me to the conclusion that the state’s position, which sees the renewal of allocations as a purely technical matter, should not be accepted… In the complex reality of land in the area, appropriate weight should be given to the fact that publishing the renewal of the allocation could serve as a crucial and essential component to ensure transparency, fairness, and legal certainty in land management. Even though sometimes the process of renewing an allocation may be simple and technical in nature, in certain circumstances, it could reveal flaws and irregularities in the original allocations.” (Sections 39-40 of the ruling).
Additionally, the court ruled that allocations of private Palestinian lands whose owners are not in the West Bank (so-called “Absentees’ Property”) also require prior publication.
The court refrained from obligating the state to publish in advance allocations of Jewish properties in Hebron, allocations of property seized through military orders, and allocations of land that the state deems to have special importance for public order or when it concerns a small area.
The Allocations of the Settlement Division
In the original petition, Peace Now demanded that allocations made by the Settlement Division be published in advance. During the hearing on the petition on April 7, 2022, the justices of the High Court noted that this is a separate issue and should be discussed in a separate petition. Indeed, Peace Now filed another petition demanding transparency in allocations by the Settlement Division. This petition recently underwent a hearing, and the court’s decision on it is awaited.