Officials from the Palestinian Liberation Organization Friday slammed a recent decision to approve a controversial law that would see Palestinians in East Jerusalem lose their lands.

The Israeli supreme court approved Thursday the use of the Absentee Property Law, which is as old as the state of Israel itself,  allowing the Israeli authorities to confiscate properties of Palestinians in East Jerusalem who currently reside in the West Bank, Gaza or elsewhere that is not the property itself.

Senior PLO official Ahmad Queri condemned the decision, saying the law was based on racial discrimination and was aimed at cleansing Palestinians from Jerusalem. He said it would lead to an exclusively Jewish Jerusalem.

The Absentee Law, was enacted in 1950 by the state of Israel in order to ensure that the lands and properties of any non-Jewish residents of what is today Israel and who had left their homes, for any reason, would become the property of the state of Israel. The ownership would then be transferred to a government department, namely Custodian of Absentee Property, that would then rent them only to Jewish residents.

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The law at the time came as a replacement of another similar regulation, called Emergency Regulations (Absentees’ Property) Law, that Jewish authorities enacted in 1948 in order to stop the Palestinian refugees from coming back and claiming their homes that they had left to any other territory due to the war that led to the establishment of the Israeli state.

The law also included those who had left their homes and yet remained within what is now defined as the Israeli state. Those who remained, estimated to be more than 40,000 Arabs, were referred to as “Present Absentees,” meaning their lands were confiscated just for the mere fact that they were not present in it at a particular day. The law included those who remained within miles from the property, those who intended to leave for only few days, and those who left involuntary.

Those “Present Absentees,” who amounted to more than 30 percent of all the Arabs that had stayed within the borders of Israel, were confined in certain areas during the first few years after the foundation of Israel. They were kept under military rule were Israeli troops prevented them from leaving those areas. Those places were closed off by wired fences.

However, those Palestinians were later granted most civil rights as Israeli citizens, but without the right of being able to sell or buy property of any sort. To this day, the Internally Displaced Palestinians and their descendents remain incapable of claiming their homes or returning to the villages in which they lived before Israel came to existence.

Thursday's decision by the Supreme court has seen much criticism from people in the Israeli government. Former Supreme Court president Asher Grunis warned that the application of the law to East Jerusalem presents many problems and it must be used in only the “rarest of rare cases,” according to the Israeli paper Haaretz.

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Grunis added that the literal application of the law could result in using it in similar fashion against Jewish settlers who live in the West Bank, leading to confiscating any properties they might own in Israel proper.

According to Haaretz, the law is worded in very broad terms, and states that any person who owns property in Israel and lives, or is present, in an enemy country can be declared an absentee and the property will be transferred to the control of the Custodian — and used for the “development of the country.” The West Bank, despite being under Israeli occupation rule, is defined by Israeli law as an “enemy nation.”

The supreme court decision to approve the use of the law comes as a result of appeal cases filed to the court over the past few years by many Palestinians in East Jerusalem who had their properties confiscated under that law.

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Avigdor Feldman, the lawyer representing one of the appellants in the case, told Haaretz, “The justices demonstrated a very formalistic approach. They determined that it is not proper, but have passed the buck to the courts, attorney general and the Custodian. They have asked to trust the generosity of the state not to make use of [the law]. That is running away from responsibility. It is clear that the law was created during a different situation and for other purposes, and is not appropriate for the present circumstances.”