Dispossession and settlement expansion

Settlement of Land Title as a tool for dispossession

In 2018, the Government of Israel decided to renew Settlement of Land Title (SOLT) proceedings, which had been suspended since 1967. Since then, SOLT has effectively served as an additional tool for dispossessing Palestinian residents of their land and has bolstered settler activity in the city’s Palestinian neighborhoods. In January 2026, the government resolved to expedite the process, setting a four-year deadline to complete SOLT on 100% of the land in East Jerusalem.

Israeli NGOs Bimkom-Planning and Human Rights and Ir Amim have been monitoring the progress of the SOLT process since its launch; the information is publicly available on a dedicated monitoring website. The organizations’ work reveals that SOLT proceedings have been launched for about 20% of East Jerusalem land without finalized status, i.e 9,000 dunams out of 41,000. By the end of 2025, about 2,300 dunams, or about 5% of all unregistered land, had been finalized and registered.

A mapping of the titles that were actually registered that was undertaken by Bimkom reveals that 82% of the 2,300 dunams where SOLT was completed by the end of 2025 were registered in the name of the State, its various arms, or under the Jerusalem Municipality. Four percent were registered in the name of private Jewish owners, individuals, or companies, most of whom are connected to settlement efforts in the city. Only 1% - one full bloc and a few individual plots - was registered in the names of Palestinian owners. In at least one known case, land with houses built with permits was registered in the name of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) without the knowledge of the Palestinian homeowners. A petition was filed against the title registration and the ensuing eviction notices in this case. It is still pending.

These figures clearly indicate that SOLT does not serve the city’s Palestinian residents, but rather facilitates the takeover of lands still in their possession, as evidenced by the urgency with which the Israeli government is now pursuing the process in East Jerusalem. In January 2026, the government passed a decision entitled Registration and Settlement of Land Rights in East Jerusalem (Resolution no. 3792) (Hebrew), stipulating the completion of SOLT proceedings in East Jerusalem by 2029. The decision allocated about 30 million ILS (~ 61.3 million USD) over the next four years to advance SOLT in East Jerusalem and added positions and personnel for the Land Registry and Settlement Authority, the Custodian of Absentee Property, the Israel Land Authority, and Survey of Israel.

Further reading:

Bimkom-Planning and Human Rights, Land Registration = Land Confiscation: Analysis of land registration in East Jerusalem 2018-2024

Ir Amim, 2025 in Review: Israel’s Policy in East Jerusalem - Deepening Annexation and Displacement, January 2026 (Hebrew)

Planning, construction and demolition

Cross-referencing planning data against SOLT data clearly shows that the purpose of SOLT is to enable the expansion of settlements in East Jerusalem while deepening discrimination against the city’s Palestinian residents.

Sixteen new settlements are planned for East Jerusalem, some new, some expansions of existing neighborhoods, with close to 20,000 housing units designated for the Jewish public and located beyond the Green Line. At least eight of these settlements are located in areas where SOLT was completed at the same time, and the land was transferred to the state or one of its arms. Close to 10,400 new housing units have been approved for these neighborhoods, and some are already under construction.

As planning and construction that benefit the city’s Jewish population accelerate, the number of housing units approved for Palestinians has plummeted. According to Bimkom figures, in 2025 the drop in approved units for Palestinians was sharper than in previous years, with only 641 housing units approved compared with 8,898 for Jews, including 2,500 units beyond the Green Line. In other words, only about 7% of all housing units approved in 2025 were intended to serve Palestinian residents, who make up 40% of the city’s population.

One reason residential plans are not approved for Palestinians in East Jerusalem is the protocol for proving land ownership, which was significantly tightened at the end of 2022. The changes made then effectively raised the bar for proving ownership for the purpose of planning and obtaining building permits to equal the requirements for registration of title, a move that defies both law and logic, and has an especially big impact on Palestinian residents. The result is a sharp drop in the number of plans that meet the prerequisites for advancement. The average number of files submitted for construction approval in Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem from 2023 to 2025 fell from about 140 per year to about 40 per year. On non-regularized, unregistered land, which makes up roughly 70% of all land in Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, only a handful of files have been opened since the protocol was changed.

As construction in East Jerusalem, including plan advancement and permit approval, has practically ground to a halt, the upward trend in demolitions continued through 2025. According to UN data, a total of 250 structures were demolished in East Jerusalem in 2025, and 118 more from the beginning of 2026 until May 12, 2026. Thousands of additional homes and structures are under imminent threat of demolition.

Further reading:

Bimkom – Planning and Human Rights, East Jerusalem in numbers, January 2026

Eviction and displacement

Israel is working to change East Jerusalem’s demographics across the legal, planning and executive spheres, while exploiting power gaps and legal disparities to transfer land and assets from Palestinians to Jews. This systemic dispossession utilizes a range of instruments: the biased use of SOLT, discriminatory planning and construction policies, the acceleration of Palestinian home demolitions, discriminatory laws (the Absentees’ Property Law and the Legal and Administrative Matters Law), and the declaration of national parks (such as the King’s Garden in Silwan, which led to the demolition of dozens of homes in the al-Bustan neighborhood and the displacement of their residents). The ultimate goal is the expulsion of Palestinians from East Jerusalem, and the efforts to achieve it are hidden behind a veneer of legality and carried out via multiple State authorities and the procedural tools available to the State (Hebrew).

Consequently, six Palestinian communities in East Jerusalem, in Batan al-Hawa and al-Bustan in Silwan, Sheikh Jarrah, Umm Tuba, Walajeh, and Nu’man, have been under real threat of displacement from their homes.

In a particularly large-scale eviction operation between March 23 and March 25, 2026, 15 Palestinian families were displaced from their homes in the Batan al-Hawa neighborhood. Nearly all of them had lived there for decades and were evicted by a court order after a prolonged legal battle against Ateret Cohanim, an organization that has been working to turn Batan al-Hawa into a Jewish neighborhood. The organization claims title as the representative of the Benvenisti Trust, a charity that purchased the land in the late 19th century, and then moves settler families into the homes. These 15 evicted Palestinian families join dozens of families evicted in recent years. According to B’Tselem figures, 28 families are under threat of eviction in the near future, after the court dismissed their request for leave to appeal and ruled that the legal proceedings in their cases had been exhausted. Several additional claims concerning 25 families from the neighborhood are being heard in the Magistrates’ Court or are awaiting rulings on appeals filed with the HCJ.

Meanwhile, to make way for the King’s Garden national park, 48 homes were demolished in the nearby neighborhood of al-Bustan from October 2023 to April 2026, pursuant to municipal demolition orders. Fourteen of the homes, housing 56 people, including 20 children, were demolished in March and April 2026. The Jerusalem Municipality has already issued demolition orders for 17 more homes, but the threat of expulsion looms over all 123 families remaining in the al-Bustan neighborhood, a total of 1,450 people, including 900 children.

Further reading:

B’Tselem, Ongoing ethnic cleansing: Home demolitions, expulsion and dispossession in Silwan, March 22, 2026,

Ir Amim, Expulsion: Israeli Instruments of Dispossession in East Jerusalem (Hebrew), January 29, 2026