My grandfather's Israeli land is not in the Tabu. All we have is an old kushan. Can we still claim it?

The document is usually a folded Ottoman or Mandate-era deed in a family file in Buenos Aires, Manchester or Marseille, sometimes with a wax seal, naming a plot near Tiberias or in the Galilee that nobody has visited since the 1950s. A search of the Israeli Land Registry produces nothing under the family name, and the natural conclusion is that the land was lost or expropriated long ago. Sometimes it was. Often what actually happened is that the land was never registered in the modern register at all, or it was registered in somebody else's name during a settlement process the family never heard about.

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Detailed Answer

Israel runs two registers, and which one a plot sits in determines almost everything about the claim. Land that has been through settlement of title under the Land Rights Settlement Ordinance [New Version] 5729-1969, a process of measurement, mapping and a public claims procedure conducted by a Settlement Officer (pkid hasdar) at the Ministry of Justice, is entered in the register of rights, and under Section 125(a) of the Land Law 5729-1969 that registration is conclusive evidence of its contents. Land that has never been settled remains in the older deeds register (pinkas ha'shtarot), organised by transaction rather than by parcel, and Section 125(b) makes registration there prima facie evidence only, rebuttable by other proof. That distinction cuts both ways for a family abroad. Unsettled land is harder to locate, since there is no parcel-indexed page to search and the entry may be under a transliteration of a name nobody uses any more, but the family's old deed, tax receipts, possession and testimony remain admissible and can defeat what the register says. Settled land is easier to search and far harder to challenge. The route for a family left out of a completed settlement is Section 93 of the Settlement Ordinance, which provides that where the court is satisfied, after the settlement, that a registration was obtained by fraud, or that a right registered in the existing register was omitted from the new register or was registered in it improperly, the court may, subject to the law of prescription, order the register corrected. Sections 93 to 97 are the recognised exceptions to the finality of settlement, they are read narrowly, and the claim goes to the District Court in whose area the land lies.

Everything about running such a claim from overseas is documentary and slow. Start with identification rather than litigation: an Israeli land surveyor or a lawyer with archive experience matches the old deed's description, which is typically expressed in Ottoman or Mandate block and parcel terms or by reference to neighbours, against the modern block and parcel (gush ve'helka), using the Survey of Israel records, the Settlement Officer's file and the historical registers. That exercise decides whether you have a Section 93 case, an unsettled-land claim, or nothing. Then comes the chain of inheritance, which has to be proved to Israeli standards for every generation between the person named on the deed and the people alive today, meaning death certificates, succession or probate orders from each country involved, and apostilles on all of it, with notarial translations into Hebrew. Expect the other side of the file to be occupied land: plots of this kind are often held by someone who has farmed or built on them for decades, sometimes with a competing claim of their own, and the Prescription Law 5718-1958 applies differently to settled and unsettled land, which is one more reason the register question comes first. Court fees are ad valorem, at 2.5% of the value of the claim with half payable on filing, so a plot valued at NIS 2 million carries roughly NIS 25,000 on filing alone. The parallel exercise of tracing forgotten Israeli assets belonging to a deceased relative is covered in our guide to finding dormant Israeli assets as a foreign heir.

In Practice: Under Section 125(b) of the Land Law 5729-1969 an entry for unsettled land in the deeds register is only prima facie evidence, so an old family deed and evidence of possession remain arguable, while Section 125(a) makes a settled registration conclusive. Section 93 of the Land Rights Settlement Ordinance [New Version] 5729-1969 allows the District Court to correct the register after settlement for fraud, omission or improper registration, subject to prescription. Identification work through the Settlement Officer at the Ministry of Justice and the Survey of Israel archives commonly takes 3 to 9 months before a claim can be drafted, and court fees run at 2.5% of the claim value, about NIS 25,000 on filing for a plot worth NIS 2 million.

When to Consult a Lawyer

• Somebody else is in possession, building on the plot or receiving compensation for it. Time is working against you in a way it is not for the occupier, and the first step is a warning note or an injunction, not correspondence.
• The plot appears in the modern register in a third party's name after a settlement in the 1950s or 1960s. This is the Section 93 scenario, it is fact-heavy and evidentially demanding, and a claim filed without the archive work behind it tends to fail on its first hearing.
• The land has been expropriated or falls within a planning scheme. Compensation rights can survive even where the plot itself is gone, but they are subject to their own deadlines and are usually paid to whoever is registered, which is why the register question has to be settled first.

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Speak With an Israeli Attorney

We trace old Israeli land holdings for families abroad, match Mandate-era deeds to the modern block and parcel, and bring Section 93 correction claims where a settlement left the family out.

Contact us for a confidential initial consultation.