Israel to register West Bank land as state property with $79M plan

Israel moves to register West Bank land as state property

The Israeli cabinet has approved a plan to register Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank as Israeli “state land.” The proposal, pushed by far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Justice Minister Yariv Levin, and Defence Minister Israel Katz, allocates 244.1 million shekels (nearly $79 million) and creates 35 new government positions for the project from 2026 to 2030.

This formal land registration process had been frozen since 1967. Its resumption marks a significant administrative step in Israel’s long-term control over the territory.

A bureaucratic strategy for annexation

For Palestinians, this is not a new escalation but a solidification of Israeli presence through legal bureaucracy. The policy focuses on Area C, which constitutes over 62 percent of the West Bank and, under the Oslo Accords, remained under full Israeli military control.

The new measure shifts the administration of Area C land from military to direct Israeli civilian governance via the Justice Ministry’s Land Title Settlement Administration. Once land is entered into the Israeli registry as “state land,” it becomes a legal reality that is difficult to reverse.

This shift represents a modern annexation strategy. “It is an act of state building that allows Zionist Israelis to determine whose claims over Palestinian lands are legal and whose vanish,” writes Palestinian American journalist Mariam Barghouti.

Coordinated measures to seize control

The land registration plan is part of a series of recent Israeli actions. On February 8, authorities adopted new measures that:

• Open land purchase mechanisms for Israeli settlers while reducing oversight.
• Further erode the Palestinian Authority’s powers in Areas A and B, which were supposed to be under full Palestinian administrative control.

Together, these actions signal a move away from overt warfare and toward administrative consolidation for territorial conquest. Smotrich framed the land registration as ending “current chaos that is bad for everyone – Jews and Arabs alike.”

A repeated history of legal dispossession

Barghouti argues this policy mirrors historical Israeli tactics. After 1948, Israel used the Absentees Property Law to absorb lands where Palestinians were not physically present, even if they remained citizens.

A similar dynamic is unfolding in the West Bank today. High rates of settler violence and the declaration of closed military zones have displaced thousands of Palestinians and denied them access to their properties.

Under Israeli law, these now-inaccessible lands can be classified as “absentee,” enabling their legal seizure. The bureaucratic process makes this territorial absorption difficult to challenge and nearly irreversible.

The subtle, everyday war in the West Bank

Barghouti contends the international community’s narrow definition of violence has enabled this strategy. While global attention focuses on bullets and bombs, Israel has waged a subtler war in the West Bank through administrative and systemic means.

Violence has diffused into daily life through constant surveillance, drones, home invasions, arrests, and checkpoints. This environment of perpetual anticipation and restricted movement has facilitated displacement.

“What this must teach us is that sometimes war exists in the subtleties,” Barghouti writes, “and the absence of relentless bombing does not mean the absence of war.” The new land policy, she concludes, is the latest phase in this long-term conquest.