FAO Briefing note on OPT: Understanding the status of land rights for sustainable reconstruction of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank

30 July 2024

Introduction:

The recent resurgence of hostilities between Hamas and Israel has led to the widespread destruction of the agrarian economy in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), with long-term implications for Palestinian land and agrifood systems in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

The conflict has affected mainly the Gaza Strip. As of 27 May 2024, approximately 1 200 Israelis and 36,050 Palestinians have been killed, with many more injured. Up to 1.7 million people have been displaced, many multiple times,2 and an estimated 54 percent of all buildings and housing have been damaged or destroyed. With regards to land and agriculture, as of May 2024, 57.3 percent of all cropland has been damaged (60 percent of this orchards and other trees),  32.7 percent of the area in greenhouses was damaged (covering over 84 percent of the area in greenhouses in the northern governorates)6 and 1 049 agricultural wells have been impaired. In addition, as of 15 February 2024, more than 300 home barns, 100 agricultural warehouses, 46 farm storage facilities, seven agricultural suppliers 119 animal shelters, and over 500 farms related to different forms of livestock production, have been damaged. The entire population of the Gaza Strip is now food insecure. Famine is imminent. One in three people faced catastrophic food insecurity around mid-March; this is expected to increase to 1.1 million people, half of the population of the Gaza Strip, by July 2024.

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), between 7 October 2023 and 15 May 2024, 489 Palestinians, including at least 117 children, have been killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and 1 964 Palestinians have been displaced after their homes were demolished or destroyed. The year 2023 was the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) began systematically recording casualties in 2005. In addition, since 7 October 2023, OCHA has recorded 896 Israeli settler attacks against Palestinians that resulted in casualties and/or damage to Palestinian property.

Land rights are central to addressing this conflict and post-war reconstruction. Israeli policies over land use and promotion of settlements have restricted access to land and land rights for Palestinians for decades prior to the current war, with negative implications for land-tenure security and agrarian livelihoods. When Palestinians are allowed and able to return to their homes and lands, steps towards restitution and documenting, registering and securing housing, land and property rights will be necessary to restore Palestinian rights, secure livelihoods and rebuild the economy.

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Recommended Actions:

Both the legal land framework and effective land rights are volatile in the OPT. The recent escalation of hostilities, displacements and destruction of property are likely to increase this volatility. Securing land rights will be crucial for establishing peace, stability and resilience in the context of reconstruction. When reconstruction efforts in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank commence and the hundreds of thousands of displaced persons return to their land, it will be critical to establish ownership over the land prior to rebuilding on the land or allocating reconstruction grants. The sheer scale of the devastation and displacement in the Gaza Strip, and the complex land-tenure context in the West Bank, call for a special focus on land tenure in the reconstruction process with the following steps.

• Monitor and document changes in Israeli land regulation practices related to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in order to understand the evolution of land rights in the aftermath of the conflict.
• Compile and corroborate evidence from witnesses and inventories and quantification of land, housing and property-rights losses in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank as the basis for potential future claims. More precisely, there is a need to quantify and value those losses and consolidate evidence by leveraging available technologies to ensure quick, cost-effective and just resettlement, restitution and/ or compensation of land, housing and property rights for returning/displaced populations.
• Support land-use and cadastral mapping, combined with land registration and the establishment of authoritative land registry and cadastre records. Fit-for-purpose and broadly accessible mobile applications that support data collection for both individual and community based cadastre mapping, land adjudication and land registration activities foster participatory corroboration, facilitating the capturing of details of land parcels, geospatial evidence, information about land rights holders and their rights to those parcels, as verified by communities themselves.
• Provide legal representation for local litigation against competing claims in (post) conflict situations or in the case of contesting and redressing action against Israeli occupation authorities. This includes collecting and compiling evidence for these cases as well as reinforcing the formal court system and alternative (often local and community-led) conflict-resolution processes. This could be achieved through support to special local (field) land courts in the aftermath of the conflict or, alternatively, through a special field-adjudication institution and procedure. Both would require special legislation and significant capacity building and monitoring of the adjudication practices.

None of the above can be deployed in isolation, but should be part of an integrated territorial approach to the recovery, (re-)construction and land (re-) development of the OPT. This should combine land rights with the provision of basic welfare and social services and security systems, as well as the reinforcement of traditional forms of cooperation, the rebuilding of infrastructure and the fostering of economic development in harmony with environmental sustainability.