“The Civil Administration evaluates every land allocation request submitted to it on an individual basis,” it added, “in accordance with the criteria determined in its regulations and the instructions of the political echelon.”

Ms. Ofran called the justification based on low numbers of Palestinian submissions “an excuse.”

Many opponents of the settlements argue that Israel has no right to use the land for its citizens in the first place.

“It’s not a technical matter, it’s beyond that,” said Shawan Jabarin, a Palestinian lawyer and director of Al Haq, an independent human rights organization based in the West Bank city of Ramallah. “Settlers have no right to apply.”

The issue is a pressing one for the Palestinians in the 60 percent of the West Bank known as Area C, which remains under full Israeli security and civil control.

The fate of a tiny Bedouin community, Khan al-Ahmar, in dry, beige hills east of Jerusalem that Israel has declared as state land, now hangs in the balance. Bulldozers are at the ready to demolish the village’s makeshift shacks, tents and mud-and-tire school, erected without permits, and to forcibly relocate the residents. A settlement nearby has plans to expand.

But Israel’s Supreme Court has issued a temporary injunction to freeze the demolition orders after residents submitted a last-ditch application for permanent construction to the Civil Administration’s planning bureau. They have also raised claims that the village sits on private land.

Since capturing the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 war, Israel has declared as state land nearly 347,000 acres, or about 42 percent, of Area C, where the settlements are, and it has allocated 167,000 acres of that, ostensibly for public use. The vast majority of West Bank Palestinians live in Areas A and B, where the Palestinian Authority exercises civil and partial security control. Roughly 300,000 Palestinians reside in Area C, according to the United Nations, as do up to 400,000 Jewish settlers.