Israel rejects Palestinian claims, registers Dead Sea land as state land

Some 35,000 acres of land previously under water are now exposed due to the shrinking sea line of the Dead Sea. Palestinians, who had hoped to claim it as their own for a tourism project, have lost out to the State of Israel.



The shrinking sea line of the Dead Sea has opened up a Palestinian-Israeli legal battle over newly-exposed earth, and it looks as if the State of Israel has won.

After two years of deliberations, some 140,000 dunams (35,000 acres) of land exposed by the receding of the northern Dead Sea can be registered as state land by the Civil Administration in Judea and Samaria. The decision comes after the preliminary registration committee rejected the claims of local Palestinian villages to the land.

Once the registration is completed, the state can allocate the land to tourism projects, but will have to decide whether to allot it to Israelis or Palestinians. For years the Palestinians have been demanding land along the northern Dead Sea to erect a tourism project of their own, which would include a hotel, but their requests have been rejected.

Over the past 20 years, the Dead Sea has been receding to a considerable degree, exposing stretches of land that were formerly underwater. Several years ago the legal advisers of the Civil Administration decided to launch a process of “preliminary registration” of the land before declaring it state land.

in full: http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/israel-rejects-palestinian-claims-registers-dead-sea-land-as-state-land.premium-1.512330