by the Israeli Military Commander to deem any land as State lands.49 Additionally, the registration process, which started under the Jordanian Administration and enabled Palestinian owners to have their land ownership recognized,50 was frozen by Israeli Military Order 291(1968).51 As a result, only 35 percent of the land of the West Bank could be registered by the end of the 1960s52. In the rare case where Palestinian residents manage to prove their ownership53 (the burden of proof unsurprisingly rests on Palestinian residents) and even if they do so on time (often enough, it is too late to appeal when they realize it), Article 5 of Military Order 59 states that the land may remain registered in the name of the State and in the hands of the new buyer, under the pretext that the transaction was authorized by the Custodian and done in “good faith.”54 Established under the Israeli Civil Administration, the Israel Nature and Parks authority derives its authority from Military Orders no. 363 and 373. It is responsible for running the Nature Reserves and National Parks.55 Although neither of these military orders contain a single criteria for a land to be categorized as reserves or parks,56 the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem counted at least 340,000 dunums of land designated as natural reserves in 1980.57 As of 2004, 18 areas were categorized as National Parks in the oPt.58 49 BADIL, Land Confiscation and Denial of Use, 14. 50 Raja Shehadeh, “The Land Law of Palestine: An Analysis of the Definition of State Lands”, Journal of Palestine Studies 11, no. 2, 1982, 97. 51 George Emile Bisharat, ‘Land, Law and Legitimacy in Israel and the Occupied Territories’, American University Law Review 43, no. 2 (Winter 1994), 539 [Hereinafter: Bisharat, “Land, Law and Legitimacy”] 52 Aryeh Shalev, The Autonomy – Problems and Possible Solutions, Jaffe Center for Strategic Studies, Tel Aviv University, 1980, 105. 53 Order Regarding Abandoned Property (Private Property) (Judea and Samaria) 5727-1967, Section 10 (D). 54 Order Concerning Government Property (Judea and Samaria), 1967, Article 5. 55 Order Concerning the Protection of Nature (Judea and Samaria) 1969, n.d.; Accessed 15 February 2022, Available at: http://www.antiquities.org.il/article_Item_eng.asp?sec_ id=42&autotitle=true&subj_id=228&id=453&module_id=6#as 56 BADIL, Israeli Land Grab and Forced Population Transfer of Palestinians, 70. 57 BADIL, Israeli Land Grab and Forced Population Transfer of Palestinians, 6. 58 Beit Sourik Village Council V. The Government of Israel (HCJ 2004) 15