The Hanover Institute for Public Policy
Data Reportby The Hanover InstituteNovember 9, 2026

How Does Israel Use Military Seizure Orders for Land? Reading the 1979 Judgment, the 1967 Order and the Government’s Own Review

A 1979 Israeli Supreme Court judgment, a 1967 military order and a 2005 government review record how seizure orders take West Bank land.

West BankLand SeizureIsraeli Supreme CourtMilitary OrdersSettlements
How Does Israel Use Military Seizure Orders for Land? Reading the 1979 Judgment, the 1967 Order and the Government’s Own Review

Israel’s Supreme Court recorded in 1979 how a military seizure order works. Order of Possession 16/79, signed on 5 June 1979 by the commander of the Judea and Samaria area, placed about 700 dunams near Nablus in the army’s possession and left title with the registered owners, and Israeli civilians began settling the site two days later. In a unanimous 5 to 0 judgment of 22 October 1979, the Court annulled the order only as to the petitioners’ roughly 125 dunams. It found that a political decision to build a settlement, and not military need, had driven the order, while holding that requisition of private land for a civilian settlement remains “potentially justified” under Article 52 of the Hague Regulations. Two other instruments take land by different routes: a 1967 military order that takes possession by reference to Jordanian state ownership, and Regulation 119, under which a commander can forfeit a house or land to the Government of Israel outright.

Key Findings

  • Order of Possession 16/79, signed 5 June 1979, placed about 700 dunams near Nablus in the army’s possession with title left to the owners. Israel’s Supreme Court annulled it unanimously, 5 to 0, on 22 October 1979, and only as to the petitioners’ roughly 125 dunams (Israeli Supreme Court, 1979).
  • The same judgment held that requisition of private land for a civilian settlement “is potentially justified under Article 52 of the Hague Regulations” where military needs “in practice brought upon the decision.” In this case the Court found that a political decision had dominated (Israeli Supreme Court, 1979).
  • The Israeli government’s own commissioned review counted 105 unauthorized outposts in March 2005, 15 of them on Palestinian private property, despite a 1979 government resolution limiting settlement to State land. On the review’s own wording, 105 is a floor and not the true number (Prime Minister’s Office of Israel, 2005).
  • Military Order 59 lets a Custodian take possession of property that belonged to the Jordanian state on 7 June 1967. Its 1967 text contains no declaration procedure, no objection window and no appeals committee (Commander of IDF Forces in the West Bank Area, 1967).
  • Regulation 119 forfeits property “to the Government of Israel.” On the State’s own account in court, it was used “only several times” between 2005 and 2014 (Israeli Supreme Court, 2014).

What does a military seizure order do to land?

Israel’s Supreme Court recorded in its 22 October 1979 judgment in HCJ 390/79, the Elon Moreh case, that Order of Possession 16/79 placed about 700 dunams around the village of Rujeib, outside Nablus, in the army’s possession. The commander of the Judea and Samaria area signed the order on 5 June 1979. Ownership stayed with the registered owners.

The Court reviewed the order as a requisition under Article 52 of the Hague Regulations. Deputy President M. Landau held that those regulations, “as customary international law,” bind “the military administration in Judea and Samaria.” A requisition takes possession for an army’s needs and does not transfer title. Seventeen Palestinian petitioners, registered owners of about 125 dunams inside the area, challenged the order. The quotations here come from the English translation published by the Cardozo Israeli Supreme Court Project. That translation is unofficial, it was made from a Hebrew text prepared by Nevo Press, and the Hebrew governs.

The record shows how quickly possession turned into use. Israeli civilians began settling the site on 7 June 1979, two days after the commander signed the order. A second order, 17/79, covered the access road to the site.

Landau also limited what a requisition can be used to build. He stated that this ground “stands independently, even without regard to the other reasons I have so far detailed.” A permanent settlement cannot rest on a temporary taking, he wrote, because “a military administration cannot create within its territory ‘facts on the ground’ for the purposes of its military needs that were in advance intended to exist past the end of the military rule in that area, when the fate of the territory after the end of the military rule is yet unknown.” In the Court’s reasoning, the temporary character of possession is a condition of the power itself. The question of who holds title across the territory is traced in the Institute’s report on who owns Palestine.

The judgment decides whether one requisition was lawful. It surveys no practice and publishes no series. Its quantities are the measurements of one site, so the 700 dunams support no total for the West Bank and no count of orders.

The Court sat as the High Court of Justice and reviewed the order under Israeli administrative law as well as the Hague Regulations. Five justices decided the case: Landau wrote the leading opinion, Justices A. Witkon and D. Bechor wrote concurrences, and Justices S. Asher and M. Ben Porat concurred without separate reasons.

Who says seizure orders serve settlements, and since when?

Israel’s Supreme Court made the finding about a specific order in 1979. Deputy President Landau held in the Elon Moreh judgment that “the military consideration was subordinate to the primary, political decision to build the settlement.” He also found that the Ministerial Committee for National Security Affairs and the cabinet majority “were determinatively influenced by reasons stemming from a Zionist worldview as to the settling of the entire Land of Israel.”

The finding rested on the military’s own answers. Replying to the Court’s questionnaire, the Chief of the General Staff wrote, “I did not approach the political echelons with a proposal to build the settlement in Elon Moreh.” He added, “There was no preexisting plan to build a civilian settlement on the relevant site approved by a competent military authority.” Landau concluded that “the process was inverted: the initiative came from the political echelons, which then reached out to the Chief of the General Staff for his professional opinion.” That opinion “would not, in itself, have led to the decision,” Landau wrote. The propelling force was “the strong desire of the people of Gush Emunim to settle the heart of the Land of Israel, as closely as possible to the city of Nablus.”

Landau applied a but-for test to that finding: “I have been persuaded that but for these, the decision would not have been made in the circumstances that existed when it was made.” He also addressed the army’s passive role: “I do not believe that this passive approach indicates that from the beginning there was a military necessity to take private property in order to build a civilian settlement.”

The same reading appears in current reporting. Peace Now, an Israeli organisation that campaigns against settlement construction, published a 2026 review that attributes most of the seizure orders it examined from 2023 to 2025 to settlement and outpost purposes, including roads and settlement protection. The Palestinian Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, a Palestinian Authority body, described a 2026 order as serving an “emergency axis” between two settlements northwest of Ramallah, as Anadolu Agency reported. Each count is that organisation’s own tally, built on its own definitions.

An Israeli government review recorded a related finding at state level in 2005. The summary of the opinion prepared by Talya Sason for the Prime Minister’s Office stated that “State and public authorities took part in breaking the law.” Those authorities financed construction of unauthorized outposts “without a resolution by the political echelon, in contrary to government resolutions, with no legal planning status, sometimes not on State owned land, sometimes on private Palestinian property or on survey land.” Sason’s subject was unauthorized outposts, not seizure orders. The summary does not say that any outpost stood on requisitioned land.

What must the army show to requisition private land?

Israel’s Supreme Court held in 1979 that requisition of private land for a civilian settlement “is potentially justified under Article 52 of the Hague Regulations.” It added a condition: this holds “when it is proved, according to the facts of the case, that military needs were those which in practice brought upon the decision to build a civilian settlement at the relevant site.”

Three elements narrow that permission.

  • The need must belong to the army. Landau quoted Oppenheim, section 147: requisitions may be made “so far only as they are really necessary for the army of occupation. They must not be made in order to supply the belligerent’s general needs.” He held that military needs “cannot be construed to include, by any reasonable interpretation, national security needs in their broad sense.”
  • The dominant purpose decides. Where several purposes are present, Landau applied a test from De Smith’s Judicial Review of Administrative Action: “What was the dominant purpose for which the power was exercised?”
  • The state carries the burden. Justice Witkon wrote, “I believe that the burden is upon the respondents.” The law, he added, “does not give the commander’s assertion that the taking of possession is required for military needs the force of a presumption.” He also wrote: “We need not be convinced of the sincerity of the consideration, but rather of its correctness.”

The test does not always produce the same result. Landau decided the case against HCJ 606/78 and 610/78, the Beit El case of 1978, which upheld a requisition for a civilian settlement on the same Article 52 reasoning. He distinguished Beit El on its facts rather than overruling it. The same test therefore produced a lawful requisition in 1978 and an unlawful one in 1979.

The remedy was narrow. The Court declared Order 16/79 invalid only “in terms of the lands owned by the petitioners,” about 125 dunams of the roughly 700 it covered. It ordered respondents 1 to 4 to remove “the civilian settlers who settled on them as well as any structure built upon them and any object brought to them,” and gave them 30 days to comply. The road order, 17/79, drew no ruling “as none of the petitioners hold any ownership rights for the road lands.”

Source: Israeli Supreme Court, 1979, HCJ 390/79 Dweikat (Elon Moreh), Cardozo unofficial English translation.

What did the government change after the 1979 ruling?

The Prime Minister’s Office’s 2005 summary of the opinion prepared by Talya Sason reports a 1979 government resolution, taken after the Elon Moreh ruling. The resolution provides that “Israeli settlements in Judea, Samaria and Gaza shall be established only on State land.” It was an executive decision recorded in an official review, not a holding of the Court.

The phrase “State land” does not appear anywhere in the 33-page English text of the Elon Moreh judgment. Under the resolution, the stated condition for a settlement site became how its land was classified, rather than a requisition for military need. The Institute’s report on how West Bank land becomes state land traces that classification process.

Twenty-six years later, the same review counted where the rule had and had not held. Sason knew of 105 unauthorized outposts in March 2005. She qualified that figure as one that “probably does not reflect the true number of outposts in the area.” By land type:

  • 26 stood on State land.
  • 7 stood on survey land.
  • 15 stood on Palestinian private property.
  • 39 stood on “mixed” land, “part State, part survey, part owned by Palestinians.”
  • The land of the remaining 18 was unresolved.

Adding the three categories that are not State land gives 61. That number is a derivation from the summary’s components, not a total the summary prints, and it is a floor, because the 18 unresolved outposts could add to it. All of these are the Israeli government’s own commissioned counts. Further detail on these sites is in the Institute’s report on Israel’s own record on unauthorized outposts.

Source: Prime Minister’s Office of Israel, 2005, summary of the Sason opinion; a party’s own count.

The review also records public spending. The Ministry of Construction & Housing reported spending NIS 71,870,000 on unauthorized outposts from 2000 to 2004. The summary attributes that figure to the ministry’s Rural Building Administration and states that it does not settle with the ministry’s own working schemes. It is the spending ministry’s own self-report, and a floor.

Sason’s definition of an outpost also limits the count. An outpost is “not attached to an existing settlement, but rather at least a few hundred meters distant from it as the crow flies,” so the 105 exclude building inside or beside recognised settlements. The Levy Commission report, a later review of the legal status of building in Judea and Samaria, was never officially published or adopted, so no government text of it exists to set beside Sason’s.

How does a seizure order differ from taking Jordanian state property?

Military Order 59 lets a Custodian take possession of property by reference to who owned it on 7 June 1967, not by reference to military need. The text is published by the Military Advocate General in the Collection of Proclamations, Orders and Appointments, booklet 5, page 162. Article 1 fixes that date as the determining date for everything the order covers.

Article 1 defines Government Property as property that, on the determining date, belonged to the Hashemite Jordanian Kingdom or any other enemy state, including that state’s government, units, authorities and corporations (working rendering). Three further limbs reach property registered in such a body’s name, property held in partnership with such a body, and corporate property with such a partner.

Article 2, headed נטילת החזקה (taking possession), is one sentence: “הממונה רשאי ליטול את החזקה ברכוש ממשלתי ולנקוט כל צעד הנראה לו דרוש לכך.” In a working English rendering, the Custodian may take possession of Government Property and take any step he deems necessary for it. No official English text exists. The Collection prints the order in Hebrew and Arabic only, so every English wording here is an unofficial rendering.

Article 5 protects the Custodian’s dealings after the fact. In working rendering, a transaction made in good faith between the Custodian and another person, in property the Custodian believed at the time to be Government Property, will not be invalidated and will stand even if the property later proves not to have been Government Property. Article 4(2) allows payment to a co-owner only if the Custodian is satisfied that the co-owner is not an enemy.

The order’s own dates and name are distinctive. The GOC Central Command signed it on 31 July 1967, and Article 7 commences it on 7 July 1967, twenty-four days earlier. Article 8 names it an order for the West Bank Area (אזור הגדה המערבית), not for Judea and Samaria.

Two features separate it from a requisition:

  • The trigger. Order 59 turns on a fixed past ownership, not on a showing about the army’s present needs of the kind Elon Moreh demanded under Article 52.
  • The procedure. The 1967 text carries no declaration procedure, no objection window and no appeals committee.

The Military Advocate General’s index lists nine amendments, the last being Order 1508 in booklet 200, so the 1967 booklet is not the text in force today. The Military Advocate General also states that about 1,800 orders have been signed since 1967, which is its own count of its own legislation.

How does a seizure order differ from forfeiture under Regulation 119?

Regulation 119 lets a military commander “by order direct the forfeiture to the Government of Israel of any house, structure, or land.” Israel’s Supreme Court recorded that wording in HCJ 8091/14 on 31 December 2014, quoting the regulation “in its current language.” Forfeiture passes the property to the state. An Article 52 requisition of the kind reviewed in Elon Moreh takes possession only.

The quotations come from the Cardozo Israeli Supreme Court Project’s unofficial English translation; the Hebrew is authoritative. The regulation reaches two kinds of property:

  • Property from which a commander “has reason to suspect” that a firearm was illegally discharged or an explosive thrown.
  • Property in an area whose inhabitants, or some of them, he “is satisfied” committed or abetted offences involving violence or intimidation.

Once property is forfeited, “the Military Commander may destroy the house or the structure or anything growing on the land.” The Defence Minister “may at any time by order remit the forfeiture in whole or in part.” On remission, ownership and interests return to those who would have held them had no order been made.

The current wording is Israel’s, not the Mandate’s. The British Mandate’s 1945 text forfeits property “to the Government of Palestine” and gives remission to “the High Commissioner,” as reproduced by Rebecca Mooney in a 2023 student note in the Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law. Justice E. Hayut wrote that the regulation “currently forms part of Israel’s positive law,” preserved by section 10 of Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty.

The State’s own account is the only use count in the record. Justice N. Sohlberg recorded that, “according to the Respondents, in the last decade, since 2005, the military commander has exercised the contemplated authority only several times.” The State itemised:

  • Two residential buildings in East Jerusalem in 2008 to 2009.
  • Four buildings in the summer of 2014.
  • Five orders then pending.

That account counts orders and buildings, not people, and it is a party’s own figure.

The Court denied the petition. At the same time, Justice E. Rubinstein held at paragraph 27 that proportionality does not allow the Court “to continue to assume forever” that demolition deters, “unless all of the data that properly confirms that hypothesis is presented to us for our review.” The judgment also quotes a military committee’s presentation finding that “within the context of deterrence, the measure of demolition is ‘eroded’.”

Regulation 119 forfeiture is distinct from planning enforcement. Civil Administration demolitions of structures built without permits run under planning law, through a different decision-maker, and the two sets of figures answer different questions.

Where does the 1995 agreement leave the army’s land powers?

The Interim Agreement signed by Israel and the PLO on 28 September 1995 left land outside the Palestinian Council’s territorial jurisdiction with Israel’s military government. In the text published by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Article XVII(4)(a) provides that “Israel, through its military government, has the authority over areas that are not under the territorial jurisdiction of the Council.”

How the areas are defined. Article XI(3) defines Areas A and B by red lines and shading on attached map No. 1. It defines Area C by subtraction, as “areas of the West Bank outside Areas A and B,” which “will be gradually transferred to Palestinian jurisdiction” except for issues left to permanent status negotiations. The agreement prints no share of the West Bank for any area. The words “per cent” and “percent” appear once in the main text, in Article IX on appointments, so any Area C percentage is a later measurement by another body.

What is excluded from the Council. Article XVII(1) removes “Jerusalem, settlements, specified military locations, Palestinian refugees, borders, foreign relations and Israelis” from the Council’s jurisdiction. Article XII(5) defines the Settlements as “the settlements in Area C.” In Areas A and B, by contrast, Article XI(2) transfers land, “including government and Al Waqf land,” and “All civil powers and responsibilities, including planning and zoning,” to the Council.

What the text promised, and when. Annex I set three further redeployments at six-month intervals, to be completed “within 18 months from the date of the inauguration of the Council.” Article XXXI(5) set permanent status negotiations to begin “not later than May 4, 1996.” These are the instrument’s promises as dated in 1995; what followed is recorded in other documents. Article XXXI(7) binds both parties: “Neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations.”

The closed-area frame. This frame predates the agreement. COGAT’s permit document, updated to 8 February 2022 and published by a party to the events, opens with this clause: “Under the Order Concerning Closed Areas (West Bank Area) (Amendment) (No. 34), 1967, the area of Judea and Samaria is a closed military area and not to be entered or exited without a permit issued on behalf of the military commander.”

The 2024 advisory opinion. The International Court of Justice, in an advisory opinion of 19 July 2024 requested by the General Assembly, recorded by fourteen votes to one an obligation on Israel “to cease immediately all new settlement activities, and to evacuate all settlers.” The opinion is advisory and binds no party.

Methodology and limitations

This report draws on five types of record:

  • Two judgments of Israel’s Supreme Court. These are HCJ 390/79 (1979) and HCJ 8091/14 (2014), both read in the Cardozo Israeli Supreme Court Project’s unofficial English translations. The Hebrew texts govern. For Elon Moreh, quotations come from the opinion body, not the publisher’s headnote. A separate English text of Elon Moreh, published in International Legal Materials in 1980, was supplied by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a party to the case, and is not the text quoted here.
  • One military order. Military Order 59 of 1967 was read in Hebrew from the Military Advocate General’s own copy of booklet 5, which is mirrored on gov.il. English renderings of it are unofficial.
  • One government-commissioned review. The official English summary of the 2005 Sason opinion was published by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Its counts are the Israeli government’s own, and the full opinion exists in Hebrew only.
  • One bilateral treaty text. The 1995 Interim Agreement was read as published by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a party to the agreement.
  • One permit document and one student note. COGAT’s 2022 permit document, a party’s own published policy, supplies a single clause. Rebecca Mooney’s 2023 student note supplies only the 1945 wording of Regulation 119, not its argument.

Two translation dates are corrected here. The Elon Moreh translation prints the judgment date as 10 October 1979. Its Hebrew date, 1 Cheshvan 5740, is 22 October 1979, which is the date used. The HCJ 8091/14 translation prints the Hebrew year as 5765. The judgment was given on 31 December 2014, which corresponds to 5775.

Several limits follow from the records themselves:

  • The judgments decide individual orders and count nothing.
  • The 105 outposts and the NIS 71,870,000 are floors on their sources’ own wording.
  • The roughly 1,800 orders figure is the Military Advocate General’s own statement.
  • The Regulation 119 use count is the State’s own account to the Court.
  • Recent counts of seizure orders by Peace Now (2026) and by the Palestinian Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission are each organisation’s own tally, on definitions and identification methods it sets.
  • None of the Israeli government records listed below publishes a series of seizure orders.
  • The Beit El judgment of 1978 is represented only by its outcome as recorded in Elon Moreh.
  • The International Court of Justice opinion is named for its recorded vote.

Conclusion

So what does a military seizure order do to the land under it? On the record of Israel’s own Supreme Court, it confers possession, not title. Order 16/79 took about 700 dunams for the army, left ownership with the registered owners, and had civilians on the site within two days.

The Court that reviewed the order set a narrow gate and kept it open. Possession is allowed only for the army’s own needs, the dominant purpose decides, and the burden rests on the state. Even so, requisition for a settlement remained “potentially justified,” and the annulment reached only the petitioners’ roughly 125 dunams. The government answered with a 1979 resolution limiting settlement to State land. Its own commissioned review then counted 105 unauthorized outposts in 2005, 15 of them on Palestinian private property, on the government’s own figures. Two other instruments open different routes to land:

  • Order 59 takes possession by reference to a fixed 1967 ownership date, with no objection window in its text.
  • Regulation 119 forfeits property to the state outright and was used “only several times” from 2005 to 2014, on the State’s own account.

The 1995 agreement left land outside the Council’s territorial jurisdiction with the military government, under arrangements dated to end within 18 months.

The 1979 judgment tied the requisition power to its own impermanence: possession that may not create facts meant to outlast military rule. The 1995 agreement framed its interim arrangements in the same temporary terms. The legal distinction between holding land and owning it is clear in the record. What remains open is how long possession can last before that distinction stops shaping what happens to the people who own the land.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can a Palestinian landowner challenge a seizure order in Israel’s courts?

Yes. The 17 Elon Moreh petitioners went directly to the High Court of Justice, which issued an order nisi on 20 June 1979, fifteen days after the order was signed, and heard argument through 14 September 1979 (Israeli Supreme Court, 1979). The Court reviews such orders under Israeli administrative law and the Hague Regulations.

Did the Elon Moreh court decide whether the Fourth Geneva Convention bars settlement?

No. Landau declined to rule on Article 49(6) because, “as part of treaty-based international law, it is not binding law in an Israeli Court” (Israeli Supreme Court, 1979). Justice Witkon wrote that the Convention “does apply” to Judea and Samaria but is not “justiciable” there. He added that whether voluntary settlement counts as a transfer “has yet to be resolved in international case law.”

How many outposts did the 2005 review record as evacuated?

Ministry of Defense data supplied to Sason recorded that 81 outposts had been evacuated, “only a few of them were manned” (Prime Minister’s Office of Israel, 2005). The figure is the ministry’s own. It covers only outposts established after March 2001, and it is not a net figure: the summary notes sites “occupied again and not yet evacuated.”

Which other 1967-era military orders govern land and water?

The Military Advocate General’s index lists three:

  • Order 92, on powers under the water provisions, dated 15 August 1967.
  • Order 158, amending the water supervision law, dated 30 October 1967.
  • Order 418, on town, village and building planning, dated 23 March 1971.

All three appear on the same index as Order 59 (Commander of IDF Forces in the West Bank Area, 1967).

Does a family’s conduct affect a Regulation 119 decision?

Justice Hayut wrote in 2014 that if family members show by sufficient administrative evidence that they tried to dissuade the attacker beforehand, “that factor should be given very significant weight,” which may “rule out a decision to demolish” (Israeli Supreme Court, 2014). Her qualification applies to the family’s own conduct and leaves the forfeiture power itself intact, which the Court upheld in the same judgment.

Did the 1995 agreement give Palestinians any powers in Area C?

Yes, within limits. Article XI(2) of the Interim Agreement provides that in Area C “Israel will transfer to the Council civil powers and responsibilities not relating to territory,” and Article XVII(2)(d) gives the Council “functional jurisdiction in Area C, as detailed in Article IV of Annex III” (Israel and the PLO, 1995). Territorial jurisdiction over Area C, which covers land, is the part withheld.

Did state bodies supply equipment to unauthorized outposts?

The 2005 Sason summary records that of 140 caravans placed in the territories in the 2003 acquisition, 90 went to unauthorized outposts, and a further 64 were conveyed to them between 18 August and 5 December 2004 (Prime Minister’s Office of Israel, 2005). These are the Israeli government’s own commissioned figures. They describe supply to outposts, not the land status of any requisition.

Sources

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