For the crime of selling land to Jews, a Ramallah court sentenced East Jerusalem resident Issam Akel to life in prison with hard labor Dec. 31. Palestinians regard such sales, especially in Jerusalem, as an act of treason and the court dealt with Akel accordingly.

The Palestinian Authority has declared war against land sales to Jews in light of an intensified buying spree by Jewish organizations of houses in the Old City and in the Silwan neighborhood. These groups, especially Ateret Cohanim, aspire to settle Jewish families there. The security forces of the Palestinian Authority gathered information about residents of East Jerusalem and Palestinian intermediaries involved in “damaging national security,” recently reporting they had thwarted the sale of 3,000 dunams (740 acres) of Palestinian-owned land in Jerusalem and the West Bank to Jews and arrested 44 Palestinians for selling land to Jewish groups. Some of them have already been tried and sentenced to lengthy jail terms and hard labor.

When the PA was established in the mid-1990s, selling land to Jews was made a war crime. For the Palestinians, the struggle for land has been ongoing since they were uprooted from their homes during the 1948 war the Palestinians call the “Nakba,” Arabic for “catastrophe.”

Right-wing Jewish groups are buying up land in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, in East Jerusalem neighborhoods and in West Bank's Area C as part of their plan to settle Jews in Palestinian population centers. The Palestinians’ highest concern is the deals in Jerusalem, where the sides are waging a highly charged property struggle. This struggle has intensified since the United States moved its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in May 2018. The Palestinians saw the shift as proof that they will never realize their dream of a Palestinian capital in al-Quds, the holy city of Jerusalem.