Israel’s annexation of the West Bank is moving full steam ahead on the ground, but it’s also going online. Last Wednesday, the Israeli government launched a new digital platform for registering lands in the West Bank, open for use by Israelis and Israeli corporations.
The new platform allows the registration of property and applies to lands in Area C of the West Bank, which comprises over 60% of the territory under the 1993 Oslo Accords. The rest of the West Bank is divided into Areas A and B, where the Palestinian Authority (PA) has varying degrees of civil and security control.
The launching of the platform comes on the heels of previous Israeli moves to alter how land ownership works in the West Bank, starting with an Israeli government decision in June 2025 to make Palestinian lands in Area C open to registration by anybody, including Israeli settlers. Since then, the Israeli government has taken several more steps to advance its annexation of the West Bank — not only with laws that lay the groundwork for annexation, but by exercising actual Israeli authority over Palestinian lands.
Now, these measures have moved to the digital realm, making it even easier for Israelis to take control of Palestinian land in the West Bank. The PA has already condemned the online Israeli land registry as “a step towards actual annexation,” calling upon Palestinians to refrain from using the platform.
Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Israeli Knesset member Orit Strock, both hardline supporters of the Israeli settler movement, called the project “a fundamental pillar of implementing [Israeli] sovereignty” over the West Bank.
Land grabs and legal loopholes
In theory, the new land registration platform is open to both Israelis and Palestinians, but with several caveats that render the likelihood of Israel accepting Palestinian property ownership claims exceedingly low, despite the presence of documentation and land deeds. According to Khalil Tafakji, a Palestinian geographer and expert on Israeli settlements, Israel might reject these claims based on a technicality inherent in an old Israeli law regarding the property of “absentees.” In 1950, Israel passed the Absentee Property Law, which legalized the state’s confiscation of the lands of the over 700,000 Palestinians who were ethnically cleansed from their homes in 1948, defining the forcibly displaced refugees as “absentees” residing outside of what became Israel.
In the West Bank today, the same law could be mobilized to disown Palestinians from their land simply because they live abroad. Many of these Palestinians living in the diaspora can’t reside in Palestine even if they wanted to because residency rights in the West Bank require Israeli approval, complicated procedures, and long years of waiting.
“If a Palestinian tries to register their property right to a land with the Israeli authorities through this digital platform, they will be required to provide information on all inheritants,” Tafakji told Mondoweiss. “Many members of Palestinian families who hold inheritance rights are born and live outside of the country, so their shares would inevitably be subject to the Absentee Property Law.” Essentially, if Palestinians use the platform, Israel might likely use it against them.
Another aspect of this new digital platform, according to Tafakji, is that it is open to Israeli individuals, whereas until recently, property registration was open only to Israeli companies. This complements an earlier Israeli government decision passed by the cabinet in February of this year, which revokes a previous Jordanian law forbidding the sale of land to non-West Bank Palestinians.
The revocation of that law opened the way for Israeli individuals to purchase land from needy Palestinians or from local or non-local companies. This, along with the opening of property registration to Israeli individuals, would “transform Israel’s takeover of the West Bank from a state-driven takeover of land to a process open to the entire Israeli public,” Tafakji pointed out, emphasizing that it would make the protection of Palestinian property rights far more difficult.
The dilemma for Palestinians
The political dimension of the new platform goes beyond land grab and forces Palestinian property owners to make an impossible choice: use the digital platform and effectively accept de facto Israeli authority over land registration in the West Bank (and over the territory as a whole), or refuse to use it and risk losing property rights inherited from your ancestors for generations.
The use of the platform by Palestinians would establish a direct channel with Israeli authorities, not only forcing them to submit to practical annexation, but also removing the PA’s bureaucratic system from the equation. This also complements the February cabinet decision, which withdrew recognition from the PA’s property registration system in Area C, where the PA does not have a civil or security presence to begin with.
This places the entire land registration process in Area C squarely within the framework of Israeli law, which according to Tafakji, is “entirely illegal, because under international law, Israel as an occupying power has no right to change land property laws and systems in the occupied territory.” But Tafakji also warned that International law “has no means of protecting the rights of the weaker party.”
Although international law has no implementation mechanisms, states that adhere to it have an obligation to press for its implementation. Last month, nine Western countries co-signed a statement denouncing Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank and Israeli policies of annexation and displacement of Palestinians. A condemnation voiced out many times in recent years, but followed by very little action.
Qassam Muaddi
Qassam Muaddi is the Palestine Staff Writer for Mondoweiss. He covers social, political, and cultural developments in Palestine, and has written for several outlets in English and French, including the Catholic Terre Sainte Magazine and other outlets. Follow him on Twitter/X at @QassaMMuaddi.
