The land was taken in four different seizure orders; two in 1978, one in 1980 and another in 1984. But the military never used the land except for two small military bases. Those bases were abandoned in the 1990s.

The Palestinians, however, were not allowed to use the land in the area of Ramallah which belongs to the Palestinian villages of Jalud, Duma, Qusra, Mikhmas and Deir Dobwan.

The villages are located in Area C of the West Bank which is under Israeli military and civilian rule.

GOC Central Command revoked the seizure orders in response to two separate petitions to the High Court of Justice. The Israeli non-governmental organization Yesh Din filed the petitions last year on behalf of Palestinians in the villages who argued that the military imperative to hold onto the land no longer existed.

The attorney for Yesh Din Shlomy Zachary called on the IDF to rescind all other land seizure orders for Palestinian property that similarly had never been used.

“The IDF must review all cases of seized land immediately and return any land seized for no real reason, as both law and common sense dictate,” he said.

“Sadly, a High Court petition was necessary before the State agreed to return private land to its owners. Using territories under military occupation is permitted only for imperative military purposes and is the exception to the obligation of upholding the right to property. As such, this measure should be used sparingly in order to prevent damaging land belonging to protected persons under military occupation. There has obviously not been such need for the land in question for quite some time, if ever,” he said.

After the IDF captured the West Bank from Jordan in the Six-Day war in 1967, land seizure orders were acceptable practice for the creation of military bases on private Palestinian property, which in many cases became settlements.

The High Court of Justice in 1979 banned the creation of West Bank settlements on land that had been seized by the military from private Palestinians in a famous case that involved the community of Elon Moreh.

Since then, land seizures have only been used for “military necessity.”

Still, the IDF has rarely returned the land even when the military necessity no longer existed. As part of its work for these four villages, Yesh Din found that the IDF had revoked a military seizure order for 30 dunams in 2012. But the IDF never informed the Palestinian owners that they could now use the property, Yesh Din spokesman Gilad Grossman said.

In 2013, also as a result of a Yesh Din petition, the IDF rescinded the 1978 military order, in which land was taken from the Palestinian village of Burka for the creation of a Nahal Brigade.

That decision followed an earlier one by the the state to cancel the 1978 military land seizure order, in which 700 dunams of land was taken from the Palestinian village of Burka for the creation of a Nahal Brigade. Within two years the settlement of Homesh was built on that property.

Homesh was one of four Northern Samaria communities that the government evacuated in 2005 as part of the Disengagement plan under which Israel withdrew from Gaza.