Despite the great sensitivity and the covert struggle over land registration in Judea and Samaria, the manner in which the civil administration handles any land registration issue is negligent and flawed. First and foremost, there is no thorough cataloging of the records. The records are physically hand-written. They are constantly in danger of being destroyed: inadvertently being weathered over time or from moisture, or perhaps even deliberately being burnt or stolen. If these documents are damaged or stolen, there remains no proof to testify for the land transaction. There is no supervision in the Palestinian bureaus after the Palestinian handling of land registration and monitoring intended to prevent falsification, information leaks, and any other action that may harm the registration process and the safe retention of information regarding the transactions. Moreover, the Land Administration staff officer has no control over the work process or the carrying out the work, the scope of the cases, and the time frame for handling any claims. These severe findings were also revealed in the State Comptroller's report, which examined the conduct of the Civil Administration after we provided the information that we discovered. Handing over files containing sensitive information about transactions and land registration is transferred from the Civil Administration to the Palestinian side (DCO) through a hole in the wall since Israeli workers do not have access to the Palestinian compound. Even the archive of the cases that have been handled is in a trailer that could easily be burned, together with It, all the land registry files, which are not digitally backed up anywhere. As such, there is no effective means to oversee the handling of information that the Palestinian Authority possesses. The system's great trust in Palestinian workers, who live under the authority of the Palestinian Authority while working for the Israeli government on sensitive issues such as national, political, security, and settlement issues, is incomprehensible. Israeli workers impose minimum controls on Palestinian handling of transactions and land registration. |