West Bank land registry essential to conflict is hand-written

Scanning project has begun

By TOVAH LAZAROFF
THE JEWISH community of Mitzpe Kramim east of the West Bank city of Ramallah in 2015 (photo credit: REUTERS)
THE JEWISH community of Mitzpe Kramim east of the West Bank city of Ramallah in 2015
(photo credit: REUTERS)
The Israeli property registry for the West Bank is handwritten, with no complete back-up copy, even though land ownership is one of the key points of conflict between Israeli and Palestinians.
This includes both recent land transactions and those from the Jordanian and British Mandate periods.
At present, the Civil Administration registers only property – Israeli and Palestinian – that is in Area C of the West Bank, but it has information that predates that division.
The status of the registry was brought to light in Monday’s report by Comptroller Matanyahu Englman, which dealt with, among other things, the Civil Administration’s process of registering property.
“Land registration is done by hand in physical books,” the report said.
“If these books are harmed,” the report warned, “it is possible that there would not be any remaining documents that testified to the real estate transactions.”
Aside from wear and tear over time, the registry could also be damaged by fire or water, the report speculated.
It noted that a scanning process had begun, but that there were still more than 40,000 pages that have not yet been copied.
With regard to the Beit El and Ramallah registry, some 33,000 pages from Jordanian books have yet to be scanned. Similarly, with regard to the Tulkarm and Kalkilya registry, there are 5,600 pages still lacking scans.
The IDF said that hundreds of thousands of shekels had been spent to advance the scanning project and that it was working on completing it.
The comptroller said the process must go at a much faster pace, before “information is lost that cannot be retrieved.” The comptroller blamed the lack of coordination between the ministries for delaying the computerization program for land registry.
It similarly noted that the registration process was very slow, with only a fraction of the registration cases moving beyond the first stage in any year.
Out of 506 registration attempts in 2018, the comptroller noted, only 25 were advanced beyond the first stage.
The right-wing NGO Regavim said that the Civil Administration’s failure to properly achieve and record land transactions, coupled by the secrecy in which such documents are held, had enabled the Palestinian Authority to seize control of land in Area C.
“The painstaking, glacial pace of handwritten record keeping is fertile ground for forgery, and leads to further violation of property rights, making it nearly impossible to conduct property transactions in a normal fashion,” said Regavim Director-General Meir Deutsch.
“The failure to carry out the necessary registration and regulation of land in these areas has enabled the Palestinian Authority to carry out a well-planned, carefully-timed and well-funded land-seizure program,” he added.


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