First Registration
The single narrow route by which a Palestinian may still enter unregistered West Bank land in the tabu after Military Order 291 closed settlement of title — privately funded, parcel by parcel, with the evidentiary burden and the whole cost on the applicant.
Military Order 291 stopped settlement of title in the West Bank in December 1968. First registration is what was left. BADIL, whose 2013 handbook sets out the mechanics for the people it is written for, traces the procedure to Jordanian Law No. 6 of 1964 on the registration of immovable property not previously registered, as amended by a series of Israeli military orders and regulations issued in 2008 and 2009.
The differences from the process it replaced are the point. Settlement of title was state-funded and worked through whole villages at a time. First registration is funded entirely by the applicant and covers one plot or a few. According to BADIL, the applicant bears the costs of the Registration Committee — including the fees of both their own lawyer and the Civil Administration’s — and is then charged levies of five per cent of the value of the land being registered.
The evidence required is the harder barrier. For miri land the applicant must show actual and effective possession and continuous cultivation under Article 78 of the Ottoman Land Code, together with a lawful source of possession such as inheritance; an Ottoman title deed can serve instead. Beyond that the file must contain an up-to-date surveyor’s map of the plot and the property tax ledgers of the person the land came from, and the applicant must publish notice of the application in two widely circulated Arabic newspapers and on a public sign in the village.
Writing in 2026, Alaa Mahajna notes that under Israel’s expansive reading of Ottoman law the cultivation requirement is typically applied over the preceding ten years — a test that access restrictions and settler violence can make impossible to satisfy on precisely the land most at risk.
Land that is not in the register is often recorded only in the Jordanian property tax registry. BADIL is careful about what that is worth: tax registration is not conclusive proof of ownership but “a de facto defence against land seizures”, and because it specifies neither the exact size nor the location of the plot and carries no map, it can be difficult to tie to a particular field.
Sources
Cited works
2- badil.org — handbook2013engPDF(opens in a new tab)https://www.badil.org/phocadownload/Badil_docs/publications/handbook2013eng.pdf
- arabcenterdc.org — annexation through law land registration and palestinian dispossession in the west bank(opens in a new tab)https://arabcenterdc.org/resource/annexation-through-law-land-registration-and-palestinian-dispossession-in-the-west-bank/
Connected in the archive
2 connected records2 records elsewhere in the archive are linked to this one, each by a piece of evidence you can read below.
named in this record — 2 records
One record names the other. A pointer for reading, not a claim that they belong to each other.
- Military Order 291 (1968)
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Military Order 291 stopped settlement of title in the West Bank in December 1968.
- The Ottoman Land Code
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: For miri land the applicant must show actual and effective possession and continuous cultivation under Article 78 of the Ottoman Land Code, together with a lawful source of possession such as inheritance; an Ottoman title deed can serve instead.
Cite this page
Every claim above carries its sources — citation is the point.
- Chicago
“First Registration.” Glossary, FALASTEEN.AI. Accessed 22 August 2026. https://falasteen.ai/glossary/first-registration.- MLA
“First Registration.” Glossary, FALASTEEN.AI, 2026, https://falasteen.ai/glossary/first-registration. Accessed 22 August 2026.- BibTeX
@misc{falasteen-first-registration, title = {First Registration}, howpublished = {\url{https://falasteen.ai/glossary/first-registration}}, organization = {FALASTEEN.AI — A Living Archive for Palestine}, year = {2026}, note = {Accessed 2026-08-22} }