Norwegian Refugee Council — Information, Counselling and Legal Assistance (ICLA), Palestine
NRC's legal-aid programme in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza: free information, counselling and representation on housing, land and property — demolition, eviction and confiscation orders, access restrictions, and documentation.
ICLA is the Norwegian Refugee Council’s legal-aid arm, and in Palestine it is one of the few places a family facing a demolition or confiscation order can get a lawyer without paying for one. NRC describes the work plainly: information, counselling and legal assistance “helping to protect people from demolition, eviction and confiscation orders, as well as access restrictions and discrimination.” Its Palestine office was established in 2009 and works in the West Bank including East Jerusalem, and in Gaza. Of the 599,540 people NRC reports assisting across its Palestine programmes in 2025, 80,882 were reached through information, counselling and legal assistance.
NRC also publishes the explanatory legal material this subject badly needs — written for the person affected rather than for a court. Its February 2017 legal memo on the Absentee Property Law and its application to East Jerusalem is among the clearest accounts in English of how a property becomes “absentee”, what the Custodian may do with it, and why release is so rarely granted. It contains the sentence that names the diaspora predicament exactly: because the law applies automatically, “people often only find out that they have lost ownership of their property when trying to deal with it.”
This archive has no relationship with NRC and does not speak for it. It is listed because it does this work and can be approached directly.
Why it matters
- Free legal assistance on housing, land and property in the places where title is hardest to defend.
- Published legal memos that explain the mechanisms in plain language, with citations to the statutes.
- Reach across the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, including communities in Area C.
Key resources
Cited work
The summary above is written by FALASTEEN.AI. The document itself is published by Norwegian Refugee Council and is linked here in full.
Cite this page
Every claim above carries its sources — citation is the point.
- Chicago
“Norwegian Refugee Council — Information, Counselling and Legal Assistance (ICLA), Palestine.” Research Library, FALASTEEN.AI. Accessed 22 August 2026. https://falasteen.ai/research/nrc-icla-palestine.- MLA
“Norwegian Refugee Council — Information, Counselling and Legal Assistance (ICLA), Palestine.” Research Library, FALASTEEN.AI, 2026, https://falasteen.ai/research/nrc-icla-palestine. Accessed 22 August 2026.- BibTeX
@misc{falasteen-nrc-icla-palestine, title = {Norwegian Refugee Council — Information, Counselling and Legal Assistance (ICLA), Palestine}, howpublished = {\url{https://falasteen.ai/research/nrc-icla-palestine}}, organization = {FALASTEEN.AI — A Living Archive for Palestine}, year = {2026}, note = {Accessed 2026-08-22} }