On June 28, 2009, the Commissioner of Government Property published notices in the Arabic-language press announcing the government of Israel’s decision to register around 138,600 dunams of West Bank land, located on the western shoreline of the Dead Sea, as State Land.  The announcement gave the public 45 days to file objections.
According to sources in the Israeli Ministry of Defense, the registration deals with land that until recently was under water, but due to shrinkage of the Dead Sea, is now exposed shoreline.  Based on the public announcements, it appears that the extent of the land covered by this State Land registration effort may go beyond just the recently-exposed shoreline.  The location and extent of the land in question, and the timing of the announcement, are alarming signs of the GOI intentions regarding any settlement freeze.

 
The map is a projection according to the coordinates which appear in the announcements.

Why would the State want to register this land as State Land?
It would appear that the primary purpose of registering this area as “State Land” is to prevent Palestinian use of the land or any Palestinian assertion of ownership over it.  It should be recalled that Israel’s military closure of the area has long placed this area off-limits to most Palestinians.  The fact that the land in question appears to go beyond the newly-exposed shoreline raises additional concerns that the government of Israel may also be seeking to use this effort as a pretext for significant new land expropriations in this area of the West Bank
In addition, this effort may indicate an Israeli government intention to use the land in some way that requires ownership of the land to first be formally defined. The shoreline area of the Dead Sea is used mainly for tourism, and these announcements may indicate that there are plans to expand the use of the shore for such purposes. It is also possible that the State is seeking to register the lands as State land in order to legalize settler use of the land already taking place.
Whatever the reason, the issue was evidently of sufficient importance for Israeli Authorities to voluntarily open themselves up to serious international criticism for the move – underscoring the implausibility of Israeli arguments that what is happening here is nothing more than an administrative or technical matter.  
Indeed, as recently as last month Prime Minister Netanyahu repeated Israel's commitment not to confiscate any more land. At his Bar Ilan University speech on 14/6/09, Netanyahu said: "We have no intention of building new settlements or of expropriating additional land for existing settlements." It is possible that Israeli authorities chose this State Lands registration procedure (rather than the usual declaration procedure) to try to avoid this being perceived as land "confiscation," and to claim that it is "merely" a standard administrative procedure to register the land.
 
The procedure of registration lands:
There are several ways to confiscate or to take over lands in the West Bank. The process of land registration can take a long time if there are individuals who claim ownership, forcing the parties to prove ownership in a long and drawn-out process. 
With respect to the question of whether Israel has a legal “right” to register newly-exposed Dead Sea seabed as State land, this is a complicated question given that it is not clear how laws regarding property rights and accretion of land through sea/lake shrinkage pertain to land held in belligerent occupation.  This is particularly true in the case of the West Bank, where the designation of “State Land” – land to be held in trust by the occupying power and to be used for the benefit of the indigenous population – has been abused as a form of de facto expropriation.  Since 1967, Israel has declared or registered huge areas of the West Bank as “State Land,” and virtually all of this land has been given over for the exclusive use and exclusive benefit of Israeli settlers and the Israeli military.

For further reading on this issue see in Haaretz newspaper