Adding 1,107 Dunams to the Jurisdiction of the Adam Settlement for Legalizing an Illegal Outpost

The Civil Administration recently published a notice of intent to expand the jurisdiction (municipal boundary) of the Adam settlement (AKA Geva Binyamin) by approximately 1,107 dunams east of Ramallah. The public has been given three weeks to object. The area includes the illegal outpost “Bnei Adam” as well as land that was previously inhabited by Palestinian families from the community of Briyat Hizma, who were violently expelled in October 2023.
Establishing a municipal boundary is one of the necessary steps for legalizing the outpost and preparing a plan to legalize the homes.

The publication reveals that in October 2023, the government declared about 501 dunams as state land, and that in January 2023, a Blue Line was drawn for about 1,300 dunams of state land in the area of the Bnei Adam outpost. The declaration and the blue line were not published on the Civil Administration’s website as is customary.

Peace Now: This is an extreme example of the Israeli government’s method of dispossession and takeover: settlers establish an illegal outpost, then violently expel Palestinian neighbors, and finally the government steps in to permanently take over the land, include it within the settlement area, and allow for the legalization of the illegal outpost. Settler violence is not a bug; it’s a feature, and part of an illegal and immoral policy of dispossession and expulsion operated by Netanyahu’s government.

Expulsion of Palestinian Residents

In October 2023, immediately after the massacre carried out by Hamas in Israel, settlers and soldiers forced the residents of Briyat Hizma to leave their homes. The residents described the event in testimony to B’Tselem:

On October 8, 2023, in the early afternoon, soldiers and a settlement guard arrived in the community and told the two families living there to leave. The family of Amin Mleihat (Abu Salim), numbering a total of 13 people, including four minors, began taking down its residential shacks and livestock pens that day. As they were working, settlers and soldiers returned and demolished some of the structures. One residential shack and a livestock pen the family had not managed to take down remained at the site. The family left, and when they returned the next day, they discovered settlers had burnt down the structures.

Even after the expulsion, settlers continued to harass, use violence, and steal property from Palestinian herders in the area. In November 2024, settlers established a new outpost (called “Tsoan Binyamin” or “Em HaBanim”) on the land from which Palestinian families were expelled, outside the jurisdiction, on private land belonging to Palestinians.

Declaration of State Land

Until the publication of the Civil Administration’s notice on December 9, 2024, regarding the expansion of the jurisdiction area, it was unknown to us that in October 2023, the Custodian for Government and Abandoned Property declared approximately 501 dunams as state land. The declaration was not published on the Civil Administration’s website, and only retroactively were we able to locate a copy of it. The area declared as state land was marked on the map under the name: “Bnei Adam – Connection”. This indicates that the team working on the declaration did not question whether these were state lands, but rather how to create a continuous area to connect the illegal outpost Bnei Adam with the Adam settlement.

As with many other cases of declaring state land, there is an evident effort to find plots of land that have not been cultivated for a certain period, allowing for the application of Israel’s draconian interpretation of the Ottoman Land Law, through which Israel turns private lands into “state land.”

The publication also exposes the fact that the land on which the illegal outpost “Bnei Adam” was established underwent a process of boundary delineation for state land (“Blue Line Team”) as early as January 2023. This was not published on the Civil Administration’s website. The land involved is about 1,300 dunams.

The updated figure for lands declared as state land under the Netanyahu-Smotrich government is 24,759 dunams. This area is nearly equivalent in size to all the land declared as state land since the Oslo Accords until the formation of the government.

The declaration map titled: “Bnei Adam – Connection”