The Absentee Property Law in East Jerusalem: Recent Developments and their Significance Ir Amim Report, April 2005

The second half of 2004 witnessed a re-emergence of the use of the Absentee Property Law in East Jerusalem.  In what seemed to be an unexpected secret an effort to seize thousands of dunams of land, privately owned by Palestinians, in East Jerusalem and transfer them to the State’s Development Authority. This policy reveals the intensification of government policy: using the Separation Barrier (the “Jerusalem Envelope”) to disconnect East Jerusalem from the West Bank, and increasingly “Israelize” the Eastern part of the city.  Had it not been halted – through the vigilance of non-governmental groups and the press, and ultimately through the intervention of the Attorney General – this clandestine operation would have enabled the construction of new Jewish neighborhoods along the southern flank of the Separation Barrier; sealing off the Palestinian neighborhoods of southeast Jerusalem from their West Bank environs. The following report will discuss these developments and their significance, and will briefly describe the work done to counter this government policy.