The head of the village council of Anata and residents of the village have submitted a petition to the Supreme Court under the auspices of the human rights organization Yesh Din. The petitioners demand that the State of Israel nullify confiscation orders issued 40 years ago against their lands and return these properties to their lawful owners. The petition pertains to an area encompassing dozens of dunams of land in the vicinity of the municipal settlement of Ma’ale Adumim in the occupied West Bank which the state has never used since confiscating them in the 1970s .

The Separation Wall near Anata (Photo: Yesh Din)

According to the petition, which was submitted through Attorneys Shlomy Zachary and Muhammed Shuqier of Yesh Din’s legal team, the IDF and the Civil Administration decided to confiscate an area of some 30,000 dunams for the purpose of establishing the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim. While some of the areas seized were indeed used to establish the settlement and associated infrastructure, part of the land was never used, and there are no known plans to actually use it. Despite this, the land – which is adjacent to the area known as “E1” – has been included within the area of jurisdiction of the Municipality of Ma’ale Adumim and Binyamin Regional Council, and has not been returned to its legal owners.

In addition to demanding the nullification of the confiscation regarding the land which has not been used, the petitioners are also demanding that all the confiscated land be removed from the area of jurisdiction of Ma’ale Adumim and Binyamin Regional Council. This demand is based on ruling by the Supreme Court stating that, in accordance with international law, confiscated land in an occupied area must be used primarily for the local population in the area in which the land was seized. Currently, in accordance with orders issued by the military commander, the residents of Anata and other Palestinians are prevented from making any use of this land.

The petition seeks to apply precedents set by the Supreme Court which establish that if the public need for which land was confiscated ceases to exist, the confiscation is nullified and the land must be returned to its original owners. Four decades after the confiscation, because the land remains unused, there is no alternative but to return the land, according to the petitioners.

Attorney Zachary, who is representing the petitioners, commented: “It is unacceptable that Palestinian land is confiscated, and after it is not used for the purposes of the confiscation, it is then annexed to the area of settlements in the West Bank. The confiscation of the land for the establishment of the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim was unlawful from the outset. To fail to return the unused land is to add insult to injury.”