West Bank and Gaza: Real Estate Registration Project

Access to land and real estate in the Palestinian territories remains one of the largest impediments to economic growth. In addition, women remain marginalized in terms of property ownership and land rights. This project seeks to expand access to higher quality land administration services through results-based approaches by advancing and accelerating the registration of properties in Areas A and B of the West Bank. The project seeks to increase the percentage of beneficiaries with final ownership rights registered including women and to reduce the time it takes to register property rights. 

The first verification report by the IVA cleared 35,016 parcels and housing units eligible for reimbursement of $700,320. Of this amount, $430,346 will be paid from GPRBA funding that is currently going through the World Bank reimbursement process. The development of the Gender Action Plan (GAP) was delayed but the fieldwork is finally being completed; the team is working on the preparation of the final GAP, which will be incorporated into the disbursement-linked indicators.

During the last mission, which took place in March 2022, the Palestinian Land Authority and the Land and Water Settlement Commission, the implementing partners, agreed to restructure the project to address key challenges hindering satisfactory performance and to improve the results framework. The project restructuring would include (i) lowering the threshold for the disbursement linked indicator payments for parcels registration; (ii) revising the project implementation arrangements, including the composition of the Steering Committee and responsibility of project management and coordination; and (iii) revising targets and indicators, including some of the baselines.