HCJ 10587-04-26 Head of Jaba’ Village Council et al. v. Commander of the Military Forces in the West Bank et al.

The village of Jaba’ is located in the central West Bank and is home to about 4,000 Palestinian residents. In 1984, the settlement of Geva Binyamin (also known as Adam) was established near Jaba’, on village land that Israel had declared public land (state land). More than one kilometer east of the settlement, an outpost named Bnei Adam was established in 2004, also on Jaba’ land that had been declared public land. The outpost was built illegally, outside the existing jurisdiction of any settlement, without a valid master plan and has extensive unlawful construction.

In January 2023, the Civil Administration began declaring the land surrounding the Bnei Adam outpost public land, with the stated goal of creating a contiguous bloc of public land between the outpost and the settlement. In December 2025, the military commander in the West Bank issued a jurisdiction order that added more than 1,100 dunams to the area of the Geva Binyamin settlement, bringing the unauthorized Bnei Adam outpost within its boundaries to enable its retroactive approval. This expansion created two enclaves of privately owned Palestinian land—one measuring 111 dunams and the other 11.

In April 2026, the head of Jaba’ village council, owners of private land trapped in the enclaves, and Israeli NGOs Yesh Din and Bimkom filed a petition with the High Court of Justice, demanding it order the military commander to revoke the order expanding the jurisdiction of the settlement of Geva Binyamin. The petition argues that the order constitutes an allocation of real property for exclusive use by the Israeli population, while shutting Palestinian residents out of the area and severely violating their property rights and their freedom of movement. The petition focuses on two core issues:

First, the transfer of public land into the hands of Israelis only: In order to retroactively approve the outpost, the military commander carved out a vast area that Palestinians, mostly from Jaba’, had used for years for farming and grazing, and had served as the seat of Palestinian shepherds. Since Palestinians are prohibited from entering settlement jurisdictions, the order effectively transfers this area to the exclusive use of the Israeli population. In this manner, an administrative-municipal tool has turned into a discriminatory mechanism that excludes Palestinian residents, contrary to the fundamental principles of the law of belligerent occupation and in defiance of the trusteeship obligations of the occupying power.

Second, the enclaves, privately owned Palestinian land trapped inside settlements: As noted, the jurisdiction order created two enclaves of privately owned Palestinian land that the Civil Administration did not manage to declare government property. Until the war in Gaza broke out, Palestinians had free access to these lands, where they cultivated wheat, barley, and other crops according to local conditions. A Palestinian shepherding community lived in the larger enclave. Since the war began, settler violence has prevented the landowners from accessing their lands, and the shepherding community that had lived there for decades was forced out.

Past experience shows that although the order excludes the enclaves from the settlement’s jurisdiction, they are destined to be taken over by settlers and swallowed up into the settlement. So, for example, before the current expansion of Geva Binyamin, the settlement’s jurisdiction already included six enclaves of privately owned Palestinian land, all of which have been the target of unlawful incursions, with roads, houses and public buildings serving the settlers built on them. Consequently, the settlement effectively covers the entire area, including the privately owned Palestinian land, and the owners whose property has been trapped inside settlement boundaries have lost their land.

By issuing an order allocating land to a settlement, with the knowledge that, in practice, owners of private Palestinian land remaining within it would be effectively stripped of their rights, the military commander exceeds his authority and breaches his duty to uphold the property rights of the protected persons and refrain from actions that harm their property.

The petition argues that the jurisdiction order severely violates the fundamental rights of Jaba’’s residents, particularly private property rights and freedom of movement. The order appropriates both private land and public land intended to serve the entire population in the area and reallocates it for Israeli use only, infringing on equality and discriminating against Palestinians in the distribution of a limited and vital public resource. The order effectively rewards criminality, runs counter to the military commander’s obligations, and was issued for an improper purpose – the approval of an unlawful outpost.

Petition status: pending