Is it part of Israel or not? Why does this huge chunk of land seem to have different rules and procedures when I want to buy a plot?
Land plots in Judea and Samaria – some background and explanations
Historical background – how Judea and Samaria ended up in Jordanian hands
The State of Israel liberated the territories of Judea and Samaria in the 1967 Six Day War.
Before the establishment of the State of Israel, according to the partition plan, Judea and Samaria were defined as destined for the “Arab side, and the head of that designated state was supposed to be Hajj Amin Al Husseini Shari’i.
In an apparently pre-agreed plan between England and the Jordanians, the Jordanians planned to invade Judea and Samaria upon the establishment of the state. This plan’s goal was twofold: to prevent the new Jewish state from controlling the territory, and to prevent the establishment of a state with an extreme Nazi orientation.
At that time, in the Judea and Samaria region, the young IDF faced the Jordanian Legion, which was the most financed and equipped army in the region, in addition to Palestinian regional forces.
The young state of Israel, which fought simultaneously on several fronts, was unable to defend the Jewish territories, and in addition to the fallen Gush Etzion, it also lost several other Jewish settlements in both the Judea and Samaria region as well as the Gaza Strip. They barely managed to maintain continuous contact with Western Jerusalem through the “Jerusalem Corridor”, for which many fighters fought and sacrificed their lives during the war.
After the war, the King of Jordan unilaterally annexed the territories of Judea and Samaria into his kingdom, even though at the time, this move was officially recognized only by Great Britain, Iraq and Pakistan.
Following the six day war: area liberated and Israel began land surveys
Jerusalem remained divided, with no Israeli access to holy sites or to Judea and Samaria, and safety remained both unpredictable and unstable in many areas.
Through nearly 20 years of Jordanian rule, the Jordanian government began to regulate and register the land, managing to cover about a third of the project, when the Six Day War broke out.
In doing so, the Jordanians continued the work of regulating the land records that began during Ottoman rule and was continued by the British Mandate.
With the liberation of these areas as a result of the Six Day War, the State of Israel froze settlement development as they intended to first document which areas were inhabited, and which were considered uninhabited and uncultivated.
In the first phase of investigation, aerial photographs were taken and passed to ground committees that were later called “Blue Line Committees”.
The role of these committees was to verify and mark areas free of residences and agricultural cultivation, and alternatively, areas that were under Jordanian military or police custody.
These lands, which were either left empty and unused and remained directly in the hands of the Jordanian authorities while the land surveys were being conducted, were declared as Israeli State Lands, and became potential locations for Jewish settlement, without political complications or international claims of land grabbing..
Settling the land in times of uncertainty
Immediately following the Six Day War, a significant part of Israel’s leadership thought that the territories of Judea and Samaria would be considered a sort of bargaining chip in negotiations toward a final political agreement with the Arab population. Therefore, they set the borders of the legal Jewish state as internationally recognized borders.
Following public pressure, however, from two sources:
- Activists of religious Zionism opposed to drawing these international borders
- Activists of the secular settlement movement opposed to drawing these international borders
the Israeli government was forced to promote plans and possibilities for Jewish settlement in several places in the areas of Judea and Samaria, even outside the official international borders, within territories that were neither settled nor cultivated.
Learn how all of this history affects you as a lang buyer, developer or investor.
