ISRAEL has ordered an urgent review of the seizure of thousands of acres of land from Palestinian farmers, who were cut off from their ancient olive groves by the separation barrier built in the West Bank.

Menachem Mazuz, Israel’s Attorney-General, admitted yesterday that the policy of seizing land in east Jerusalem from so-called “absentees” had been approved secretly by Cabinet ministers last summer without his consent.

The review was made public in a letter from Mr Mazuz to a lawyer representing some of the farmers”.

The United States has expressed its concern over the confiscation of the land and Condoleezza Rice, the new Secretary of State, is expected to raise the issue when she visits Israel next week.

Hundreds of farmers in Bethlehem have been unable to tend their olive groves and citrus orchards because of the electric fence that cuts through their land. In November they were told that the land had been seized for the expansion of Jewish settlements.

“How are we absent?” Jonny Atik, a 55-year-old farmer, asked as he surveyed his eight acres of inaccessible fields just metres away yesterday. “I can see my land, but we were never able to get permits to allow us to go there. It was my family’s land even before the Israelis established their state.”

In July 2004 the Israeli Cabinet approved the land seizure using legislation from 1950 that allowed confiscation without compensation from Arab “absentee” landlords who fled during Israel’s independence war.

Farmers such as Mr Atik and his neighbours had continued to farm their land, as their families had done for generations, without hindrance until Israel began construction of its separation barrier almost two years ago. Now he is unable to harvest his olive crop because Daniel Seidemann, his Israeli lawyer, could not secure a permit.

Two months ago Mr Seidemann discovered from the army that the land overlooked by the expanding Jewish settlement of Har Homa had been seized by the Government. Hundreds of other farmers in Bethlehem were stunned to find themselves similarly deprived of nearly 4,000 acres of land.

“Ariel Sharon has shown he has a clear understanding of President Bush’s message (that Israel could retain settlements around Jerusalem) as long as the Gaza disengagement proceeds,” Mr Seidemann said.

Hanna Nasser, the Mayor of Bethlehem, said: “This is nothing other than land theft.”

B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, said of the Israeli Government: “They said — and repeated it to the Supreme Court — the barrier was only about security,” Sarit Michaeli, a B’Tselem spokesman, said, “but this is further proof it wasn’t.”

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