The land policies, practices and measures adopted by the Israeli authorities since 1948 have proved prejudicial to the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people. Jewish acquisition of land in Palestine shows that there were several stages in the dispossession of the Arabs. The history of the acquisition of agricultural land in Palestine and of the land cultivation system before the traumatic emergence of Israel shows disparity between Jews and Arabs with respect to land ownership in Palestine. Israel has perpetuated this disparity, mainly through the confiscation of land belonging to the Palestinian Arabs and its policy of Jewish settlements.
Till the 19th century, the land tenure and land cultivation systems in Palestine had two main features: one, there were no laws or regulations on the management and cultivation of land that were not completely out of date; and, the other, the big landowners owned nearly all the land. The system of tenant farming, known as fief under the Turkish rule, became less frequent towards 1858, when a land registry, the Defterkhane was established. Side by side with this system of land cultivation, there were others under which the and was managed by the community (MushaC) and the religious trust (Waaf). A third type of land ownership that assumed considerable importance under the British mandate, was that of the common lands, which were considered public property and were administered by the mandatory power.
Consideration of the systems of cultivation and land ownership in Palestine shows that most of the land was under the control either of the Ottoman government (Ottoman fiefs) or Turkish nationals, or of a minority of the Palestinian Arab population. Very little land was acquired by the Jewish minority, whose holdings had been practically negligible till the World War I, and they did not make any sizeable acquisition of land until the Jews of Eastern Europe, lured by the promise of a Jewish homeland in the Balfour Declaration, started to immigrate into Palestine.
Two periods may be distinguished in the Jews’ acquisition of land in Palestine. During 1880 to 1920, the Jews were small landowners, and the amount of land they owned was not very large compared with that of Palestinian Arab majority. During the second period, which began soon after the Balfour Declaration of 1917, and extends from 1921 to 1947, Jewish settlements, the Kibbutzim, were established with the encouragement of such Jewish institutions as the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association, the Palestine Land Development Company and the Jewish National Fund.
The purpose of these three Jewish institutions was to transfer the Jewish population of Palestine and provide them with facilities, homes, jobs and especially land. It has been estimated that by about June 1947, the Jewish minority in Palestine had taken over 1,850,000 dunams (a unit equal to 1,000 square metres) out of a total of 13 million dunams mainly as a result of transactions between the above mentioned Jewish institutions and the big Arab (mostly absentee) landowners of Palestine.
The remainder of the land in Jewish hands came either from the Mandatory Power (cessions) or from religious charitable organisations. The land ceded by the Mandatory Power was considered to be publicly owned; in some cases it could be made available to a specific community.
In its Village Statistics, the Mandatory Power estimates the total area of land owned by the Jews in 1945 to be 1,491,699 dunams, compared to about 13 million dunams owned by the Arabs in Palestine and it provided arguments for the members of the U.N.O. that were opposed to the partition plan.
One of the features of the partition plan for Palestine was that the Arab populations in both states envisaged in the plan would own and enjoy most of the land. However, after the military operations of 1948, the disparity with respect to land ownership disappeared when land and whole villages belonging to Palestinian Arabs fell into the hands of the Jews.
MILITARY OPERATIONS OF 1948 AND LAND ACQUISITION
After the military operations of 1948 and before the signing of the Armistice Agreements, Israel took over the sub-districts of Jaffa, Ramleh, Haifa, Nazareth, Beisan and Tiberias and a substantial part of Acre and Safad. The Jewish forces also occupied the coastal area of the sub-district of Tulkarm and the western sector of Jerusalem. Thus, about 20 million dunams of all the land i.e. just over three quarters of all the land in Palestine, came under the control of the military forces of Israel.
The military occupation of Arab-owned lands started in the first few months of 1948 and was stepped up in April 1948, when whole towns like Beisan, Jaffa, Acre, Lydda and Ramleh and the Arab sections of the towns of Haifa, Safad and Jerusalem were taken over by the Haganah forces. And so about 700,000 Palestinian Arabs were forced to live away from their homeland, except a few thousand Arabs authorised by the Israelis to rejoin their families in Israel. It is agreed that between 16 and 20 million dunams in area, fell into the hands of the Israelis. In Negev, for instance, somewhat more than 12 million dunams fell into the hands of Israelis. And more than 4 million dunams of the land abandoned by the Palestinians is fertile.
The de facto acquisition of land in the above-mentioned districts under Israeli military occupation was all the easier because there was no precise legislation governing the management of land abandoned by the Arabs. It was not until 1950 that the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) adopted laws which were supposed to legalise the de facto acquisition of land that had been the practice up to then. The institutions responsible for the management of land abandoned by the Palestinians, such as the Custodian of Absentee Property and the Jewish National Foundation, which had been improvising measures of expediency for acquiring the Palestinians’ abandoned land, found ‘legal’ cover for the measures they had taken with respect to the use of this land in the Absentee Property Law of March 1950.
It is estimated that between May 15, 1948 and the end of 1951 more than 684,000 Jewish immigrants settled down in Israel on a substantial part of the land abandoned by the Palestinians.
Of the 370 Jewish settlements established between 1948 and the beginning of 1953, 350 were established on land abandoned by the Palestinians. In 1954 more than one-third of Israel’s Jewish population, plus 250,000 new Jewish immigrants, were settled down in whole cities that had been completely deserted by the Palestinians as a result of the military operations of 1948. Jaffa, Acre, Lydda, Ramleh and Beisan were some of them.
As to the Palestinian Arabs who had remained in Israel, restrictive measures amounting to dispossession were taken by the Custodian of Absentee Property, who was inclined to interpret the Absentee Property Law rather too broadly. The Custodian, who was responsible for applying the March 1950 Law governing the management and administration of land and property that was supposed to have been abandoned by the Palestinians, subsequently transferred responsibility for the management of this property to another institution, the Development Authority, in September 1953 which had been established under a new law, the Development Authority Law. Under this law, the Development Authority was empowered to acquire land and property from the Custodian and make them available to the State. The State, which thus became the owner of the so-called ‘abandoned’ land and property, was entitled to dispose of them as it deemed fit. In the majority of the cases, the State put this so-called ‘abandoned’ property up for sale or leased it.
In 1953, the Knesset enacted a new law, the Land Acquisition Law (Validation of Acts and Compensation), the purpose of which was to permit the final disposal of the ‘abandoned’ Palestinian land and property. Under this law, the entire question of the land, property and goods abandoned by the Palestinians after the military operations of 1948 could be finally liquidated. And after the Israeli memorandum to the Conciliation Commission of October 9, 1953 informing it that the disposal of property had been authorised by the government of Israel and effected in accordance with the provisions of the Absentee Property Law of 1950, it was not difficult to see what the Israeli authorities intended to do with the abandoned property.
The new law gave legal sanction to the acts and measures that had already been taken to dispossess the Palestinians of their so-called ‘abandoned’ property. By virtue of the powers it conferred on the Minister of Finance, the title deeds for the ‘abandoned’ land and property could be transferred to the State of Israel through the Development Authority. The State thus became the legal owner of most of the property the Palestinians were supposed to have abandoned.
Because of the broad legal powers it gives the State authorities particularly the Minister of Finance, the Land Acquisition Law is one of the most important legal acts of the Israeli Knesset. Henceforth, the Israeli authorities – particularly the State through the Land Acquisition Law – alone were responsible for the real estate abandoned by the Palestinians after the military operations of 1948.
Thus, it took three years, during which plans and measures were worked out, for the State of Israel to take permanent possession of the land and property belonging to the Palestinians. Some transitional measures had, however, been taken by the military authorities that were responsible for the administration of the land that had fallen into the hands of Haganah after the military operations of 1948. For instance, the military administrators had adopted measures and issued ordinances to take over land and property abandoned by the Palestinians, mainly on the ground of ‘reasons connected with security and defence.’
The first of these ordinances – the Abandoned Areas Ordinance – was intended mainly to authorise the various actions to despoil the Palestinians of their property, including their land, and to co-ordinate these actions.
Another series of measures taken by the military authorities in 1948 – the Defence Regulations – empower the military government to declare specific parts of the occupied territories ‘closed areas.’ These areas, which the public was forbidden to enter for ‘security reasons, are vast and mainly in the public domain. This ordinance, which is modelled on the special legislation in force under the mandate, could sometimes be interpreted too broadly and used to prevent Palestinians who wished to do so from returning to their villages, after the military operations of 1948.
Article 25 of this ordinance, which makes the military government the only authority, was invoked in February 1950 to expel the inhabitants of the village of al-Ghabisya, in Galilee, which had been declared a ‘closed area.’ Several other villages, mostly in Galilee, which include Amqa, Faradiya, Karf-Inan, Suffuriya, Al-Manusra and Al-Majdal, were declared prohibited areas under the Defence Regulations (Security).
Another measure of no less importance taken by the Israeli authorities in the occupied territories after the military operations of 1948 is the Emergency Regulations (Security Zones), adopted in 1949. This ordinance gives the Minister of Defence, with the approval of the foreign affairs and security committees of the Knesset, the power to declare any area a protected area.
The areas covered by this measure lay mostly in frontier areas near the borders with Syria and Lebanon. The whole area of the Triangle in the central region of Israel, which is populated mainly by Palestinian Arabs, was declared a security zone, which meant that the inhabitants could not return to it without a permit. And the permits, which are issued by the Minister of Defence, are practically unobtainable. Several areas of the Gaza Strip and in the region between Jaffa and Jerusalem have been declared security zones in this way.
Of course, areas that are declared security zones eventually become state property. In this connection, let us mention the example of the inhabitants of the district of Igrit in Galilee, near the Lebanese frontier, who were expelled from their village in 1948 never to return despite the ruling of the Israeli Supreme Court in their favour in 1951.
A fourth ordinance adopted by the military authorities in 1949 following the 1948 military operations was the Emergency Regulations (Cultivation of Waste Lands).
The immediate purpose of this ordinance was to prevent land suitable for agriculture that had been deserted by its owners after the hostilities of 1948 from falling into disuse, and it authorised the Minister of Agriculture to take over the land and make it pay. Article 24 of this ordinance empowered the Minister of Agriculture to legalise the de facto acts of expropriation which occurred during and immediately after the 1948 war, for which the Jewish agricultural organisations and the youth organisations of the kibbutzim and the Nahal were mainly responsible. The Emergency Regulations also authorised the Minister of Finance – i.e., the State – to take over lands that had been declared closed areas by the military authorities under the defence and security ordinances.
And so, when lands belonging to Palestinians (living either in or away from their villages) which had been declared closed areas or security zones under the military government’s defence and security ordinances remained uncultivated for a certain period of time, they were handed over to the ministries of finance and agriculture for development purposes.
Another ordinance adopted by the Israeli military authorities after the 1948 war was the Emergency Land Requisition Law. Under this ordinance on the requisitioning of land, adopted in 1949, the Israeli authorities could order buildings belonging to the Palestinians to be assigned to the Jewish immigrants who numbered, as stated above, some 700,000 immediately after the military operations of 1948-49. This ordinance, which was originally intended to remain in force for only three years and applied mainly to urban areas, was extended from 1949 to 1958, when the military authorities decided, for ‘security reasons,’ to confiscate some of the buildings that had been requisitioned under the ordinance.
PHASED DISPOSSESSION
As is clear fro the preceding discussion, the Palestinians were dispossessed of their land and other assets in stages, the most important of which was that of 1953, when the laws on the acquisition of land and other property were adopted. This legislation, which authorises the State of Israel to take over direct legal ownership of land and other assets owned by the Palestinians, gives the State and State bodies preference over any other institution as far as the acquisition and exploitation of Palestinian-owned land and property are concerned.
Since the adoption of the Land Acquisition Law in 1953, the State has become the owner of most of the land and property belonging to the Palestinian Arabs. Prior to the adoption of this law, measures of expediency for coping with the situation were taken in the form of ordinances, immediately after the cessation of hostilities in 1948. These measures, most of which were not submitted to the Knesset for approval were issued by the military authorities, which gave ‘reasons’ connected with security and defence as their justification. These measures also served to ‘legalise’ the de facto dispossessions that had taken place immediately after the military operations, for which the agricultural organisations were responsible.
MILITARY OPERATIONS OF 1967 AND OCCUPATION POLICY
After the military operations of 1967, all the remaining parts of the mandated Palestinian territory (West Bank and Gaza) were occupied by Israel, in addition to some Syrian and Egyptian territory (Golan Heights and Sinai). As to the city of Jerusalem, the western sector of which had been under Israeli control since the 1948 hostilities, the Knesset decided on its de jure annexation on June 29, 1967, in the face of the opposition of the international community.
The annexation of Jerusalem, decided upon a few days after the cessation of the 1967 hostilities, was followed by large-scale expulsion and dispossession of Palestinians. Thousands of Palestinians were expelled and dispossessed of their houses and apartments in the Old City. Six hundred Palestinian-owned buildings were confiscated and used to shelter Jewish immigrants.
By the time the hostilities ceased, the Israeli military forces were in possession of the whole of mandated Palestine. Indeed, the military forces of the Jewish State occupied not only the part of Palestine assigned to Israel by the United Nations in resolution 181 (II) but also all that part of Palestine which was to constitute the Palestinian Arab State. Part of this territory had been occupied ever since the military operations of 1948. At the end of the 1967 hostilities, the Israeli military forces occupied some Syrian and Egyptian territories as well as the Golan Heights and Sinai. And, as we have seen, the city of Jerusalem was annexed.
ORIGIN AND AIM OF JEWISH SETTLEMENTS POLICY
The first Jewish settlements were established in the years preceding or immediately following the World War I, when the Jews were immigrating into Palestine. It must be noted, however, that this immigration was linked to the concept of a ‘Jewish homeland in Palestine’ contained in the declaration made by Lord Balfour in 1917 and to the social and political events that were taking place in the countries of Europe prior to the Soviet Revolution of October 1917. However, although the Arab people of Palestine naturally objected to and strongly opposed this immigration, it was not tied up with dispossessing the Palestinians of their land and other properties, as was the case after the military operations of 1948 and 1967.
The picture of the acquisition by the Jews of land and property in Palestine after the hostilities of 1948 outlined in this study reveals that there were three main stages in the process of dispossession. During the first of these stages, which followed immediately on the 1948 hostilities, the Jewish population illegally seized land and property belonging to the Palestinians. The dominant feature of the second stage is the military ordinances sanctioning the de facto acquisitions of land and property by the kibbutzim and other Jewish organisations and authorising the requisitioning of land and other properties on grounds of security and defence.
The third stage is characterised by the increasing intervention of the State in the acquisition of the so-called ‘abandoned’ Palestinian property through such ‘legal’ formalities as those provided by the Land Acquisition Law of 1953.
It is estimated that more than 684,000 Jewish immigrants settled down in Palestine in the years immediately following the military operations of 1948 and that most of them took advantage of the practical measures and of the existing legislation to take over the land and other properties belonging to the Palestinians.
The main features of this period is the complete absence of any direct action by the State of Israel that would indicate practical and rational use of the Palestinians’ abandoned land and other properties, which enabled agricultural youth organisations and religious groups to take it over. However, Israel was more concerned at this time with finding ‘legal’ ways of taking over the Palestinians’ property which would preserve its credibility.
It is not until 1967 that it is possible to detect several different currents of ideas about the Jewish settlements and the use that should be made of the property seized by the Israeli authorities after the 1967 hostilities. Two of these currents are significant. One is Eretz Israel, which is concerned with the territorial imperatives of the Jewish State, and the other is the Judenstaat, which is concerned with its demographic composition.
The outcome of the political debate concerning the territories that had been occupied after the 1967 hostilities was two concrete proposals formulated by the ministers Allon and Dayan. In rough outline, the Allon plan provided for an Arab Enclave on the West Bank of the Jordan which would be linked with Jordan by a corridor extending from the district of Ramallah to the town of Jericho and the Allenby Bridge. The enclave reserved for Palestinians in the Allon plan would be bounded on the east by the Jewish settlements in a part of the West Bank over which Israel would exercise national sovereignty.
The plan put forward by Dayan, the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, on the other hand, provided for the gradual integration of the Palestinian populations of the West Bank and Gaza in the life of Israel through the daily contacts they would have with its inhabitants.
Whatever their ideas about the future of the occupied territories, most of the Israeli political groups of this period agreed that there should be a Jewish presence in the occupied areas.
In any event, whatever the reasons given to justify the Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, such settlements are contrary to the spirit and the letter of Article 49 of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, which states that ‘the Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own population into the territory it occupies.
JEWISH SETTLEMENTS IN THE OCCUPIED TERRITORIES
From the end of the 1967 hostilities onward, the Israeli authorities’ efforts to establish Jewish settlements were directed mainly at the occupied territories. In 1967 itself, two settlements had already been established on the Golan Heights and two in Sinai, one in the area of Hebron, while a start was being made on building a Jewish city in the Arab sector of Jerusalem. The next year, 1968, witnessed great expansion although the main thrust was in the area of the Golan Heights, which it had already decided unofficially not to return to Syria. Eight settlements were established in that area in 1968 alone, compared with only three in the rest of the occupied territories.
In 1969, eight new settlements were established, while efforts to consolidate the existing ones continued. In 1970, the efforts were directed mainly at making the Allon plan operational, a plan which provided for the annexation of a third of the West Bank, including the Jordan Valley. Five of the six settlements established by Israel that year were in the fertile valley of Jordan. Seven new settlements were established in 1971, and six more in 1972. If only two were established in 1973, that was mainly due to the preparations for the construction of the town of Yamit, in the district of Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip, which had to be interrupted for several months because of the war. The new settlements were mainly kibbutzim (collective villages), the others being moshavim (co-operative villages or ordinary villages): most of them went to the Labour Party and the remainder to religious groups.
Most of these settlements were established either on Palestinian lands from which the owners had fled as a result of the 1967 War, or on common lands. In Jerusalem and Hebron, land was requisitioned for the construction of the Jewish quarters. In the Jordan Valley and around Kfar-Etzion, some of the local farmers’ land was also requisitioned.
Another method was also employed which gave rise to protests in Israel. In January 1972, the army expelled 6,000 Bedouin from where they had been living for decades, in the north-east of Sinai, in the Rafah salient. It demolished their houses, stopped up their wells and enclosed the area (about 4,000 hectares) with barbed wire, all with a view to establishing a Jewish settlement there.
The October War did not prevent expulsion of a thousand other Bedouin from their land (3,600 hectares) in the same area or the destruction of their dwellings. The operation was carried out on October 8, 1973.
In March 1972, the authorities employed other means when the inhabitants of the village of Akraba refused to leave their land, which had been requisitioned by a decree of the military government of the West Bank: Piper Cub aircraft were used to spray the land with a chemical which destroyed the entire crop. The land was placed at the disposal of the new settlement of Nahal Gitt later in the year.
It is estimated that the Labour government decided on and facilitated the establishment of more than ninety Jewish settlements, twenty-two in the Gaza District and the Sinai, thirty-six on the West Bank of Jordan and abut a dozen residential quarters in the eastern sector of Jerusalem.
The government of Israel is credited with officially recognising the three ‘illegal’ settlements that already existed in the West Bank, Kaddum, offra and Ma’ale Adumin.
The Israeli authorities continued the policy of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories laid down by the Majai authorities. Begin’s government authorised the establishment of a settlement near Nablus in the West Bank by a group of militants. Ariel Sharon announced a grand plan in 1977 for the Jewish settlement on the occupied territories covering a period of about 20 years under which two million Jews could be absorbed.
It is estimated that by 1979 about 80 Jewish settlements were established in the West Bank since the war of 1967.
Here it must be remembered that the General Assembly of the United Nations (resolution 2353 (XXIV) of December 10, 1969) ‘reaffirms the inalienable rights of the people of Palestine’ and it was reaffirmed regularly since 1969. The UN noted that the methods and practices of the occupying power are harsh and excessive and that they sometimes go as far as systematic repression.
In a resolution adopted on October 28, 1977, the UN called upon the Israelis to ‘desist forthwith from taking any action which would result in changing the legal status, geographical nature or demographic composition of the Arab territories… including Jerusalem.’ Needless to say, the Israelis pay no heed to the call of the international community.
Startling revelations were made by Robert Fisk in the London Times in December 1980 after his meetings with Palestinians in exile, and extensive visits to probe into the Palestinians’ property and land. The articles which appeared in seven parts caused resentment among the Zionists who organised a rally against the Times. An authoritative work on Palestinian land is that prepared by the United Nations Organisation in 1980 entitled Acquisition of Land in Palestine (New York: UNO 1980) which probes into the matter in detail.
Prior to the military operations of 1948 and 1967, Palestinian Arabs’ lands had been acquired by the traditional market methods, but these were subsequently replaced by other methods and the Palestinians’ abandoned land and property was simply seized by the Jews. For instance, after the military operation authorities took emergency and other measures to seize the Palestinians’ land and property for ‘security reasons.’
In order to justify these measures, the Israelis subsequently enacted a series of ‘laws,’ the most important of which – the Land Acquisition Law – which enabled it to give a ‘legal’ cover to all the abuses related to land acquisition. These ‘laws’ enabled them to take over abandoned land and property.
This law, of which the State of Israel is the main beneficiary since it owns most of the land and other real property in Palestine, was subsequently to facilitate the direct intervention of the state in the administration and management of the land and other real property owned by the Palestinians. This intervention was aimed mainly for the establishment of the illegal Jewish settlements.