JERUSALEM: Initial data from a land registration drive launched in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem point to a "deeply alarming" trend of land appropriation by the Israeli state, an Israeli rights group said Monday.
Israel resumed land registration in east Jerusalem in 2018, reviving a process that had largely been suspended after it occupied and annexed the territory in 1967.
Bimkom, an Israeli rights group focused on urban planning and the protection of Palestinian rights in east Jerusalem, examined the first official data covering roughly 2.3 square kilometres, or about three percent of east Jerusalem, where registration procedures have been completed.
It found that 82 percent of the land surveyed had been registered under the Israeli state or the Jerusalem municipality.
Another nine percent was listed under "unknown owners" -- a classification the group described as an initial step toward eventual state takeover -- while four percent was registered to Jewish owners, most of them allegedly connected to the settler movement.
According to the NGO, approximately four percent of the plots were registered to churches, while only one percent were recorded under Palestinian ownership.
Bimkom warned that the registration process is being used by Israeli authorities for "effectively taking land ... from beneath people's feet", calling it "deeply alarming".
"This data clearly indicates that the renewed... procedures do not serve -- and were not intended to serve -- the Palestinian residents of the city, but rather to provide a bureaucratic tool for the appropriation of Palestinian land for the benefit of the state."
The registration process advances plot by plot and lacks transparency, Bimkom architect Sari Kronish told AFP.
"There is no transparency regarding why and how the choices of where to begin are made," Kronish said.
The areas where registration has already been completed largely correspond to vacant land earmarked for settlement construction, a pattern Bimkom says reinforces concerns that political motivations are driving the process.
The NGO added that some of these zones also include Palestinian homes, many of which have reportedly been registered under the state or entities linked to settlement groups.
Israel's justice ministry, which oversees the registration process, did not respond to requests for comment.
Bimkom also denounced what it described as increasingly restrictive measures toward Palestinians, for whom proving land ownership has become nearly impossible.
Jerusalem lies at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Israel considers the city its undivided capital, while Palestinians view it as the capital of a future, independent state.
East Jerusalem's annexation is considered as illegal by much of the international community and the United Nations, which regularly condemns Israeli measures aimed at altering the demographic makeup of the predominantly Palestinian eastern sector of the city.
