Land and Property Laws in Israel
Encyclopedia
Land and property laws in Israel provide a legal framework which governs land and property issues in Israel
. At its establishment, Israel continued to apply the pre-existing Ottoman
and British
land law. Over time, these laws were amended or replaced.
In 1945, of the 26.4 million dunam
s of land in Mandate Palestine
, 12.8 million was owned by Arabs, 1.5 million by Jews, 1.5 million was public land and 10.6 million constituted the desertic Beersheba district (Negev
). (There are 10 dunams in a hectare.) In terms of arable land, 7.8 million dunams was owned by Arabs, 1.2 million by Jews and 0.2 million was public land. By 1949, some 700,000 Palestinians had fled or been expelled from their lands and villages. Israel was now in control of some 20.5 million dunam
s (approx. 20 500 km²) or 78% of lands in what had been Mandate Palestine: 8% (approx. 1,650 km²) were privately controlled by Jews, 6% (approx. 1,300 km²) by Arabs, with the remaining 86% was public land.
The first challenge facing Israel was to transform its control over land into legal ownership, the motivation underlying the passing of several of the first group of land laws.
Today, the Israel Land Administration
(ILA) is responsible for managing the 93% of the land in Israel which is public land. Thirteen percent belong to the Jewish Nation Fund (JNF)
,; the remainder is either state property or belongs to the Israel Development Authority. This land comprises 4820500 acres (19,507.9 km²). "Ownership" of real estate in Israel usually means leasing rights from the ILA for a period of 49 or 98 years. Under Israeli law, the ILA cannot lease land to foreign nationals, which includes Palestinian residents of Jerusalem who have identity cards but are not citizens of Israel. In practice, foreigners may be allowed to lease if they show that they would qualify as Jewish under the Law of Return
.
embarked on a systematic land reform program in the second half of the 19th Century. Two of the new laws were the 1858 land registration law and the 1873 emancipation act.
Prior to 1858, land in Palestine
, then a part of the Ottoman Empire since 1516, was cultivated or occupied mainly by peasants. Land ownership was regulated by people living on the land according to customs and traditions. Usually, land was communally owned by village residents, though land could be owned by individuals or families.
In 1858 the Ottoman Empire introduced The Ottoman Land Code of 1858, requiring land owners to register ownership. The reasons behind the law were twofold. (1) to increase tax revenue, and (2) to exercise greater state control over the area. Peasants, however, saw no need to register claims, for several reasons:
The registration process itself was open to misregistration and manipulation. Land collectively owned by village residents ended up registered to one villager, and merchants and local Ottoman administrators took the opportunity to register large areas of land to their own name. The result was land that became the legal property of people who had never lived on the land, while the peasants, having lived there for generations, retained possession, but became tenants of absentee owners.
The 1873 emancipation act gave Jews the right to own land in Palestine under their own name. The changing of this law (the change occurring at the same time as the freeing of the Africans in the United States and in South America and the emancipation of the serfs in Russia (held in slavery by the Russian landowning class) was a part of the worldwide 19th century movement towards emancipation and civil rights for oppressed minorities—-and Jews were very much oppressed legally in Palestine. This 1873 secular land reform/civil rights law was popularly confused with a religious law and it was held as a "humiliation to Islam that Jews should own a part of the Muslim Ummah
". The confusion between religious and secular law made the laws (ended in 1873) against Jewish ownership of land 'religious laws'.
Over the course of the next decades land became increasingly concentrated on fewer hands; the peasants continued to work on the land, giving landlords a share of the harvest. This led to both an increased level of Palestinian nationalism
as well as civil unrest. At the same time, the area witnessed an increased flow of Jewish immigrants who did not restrict themselves to the cities where their concentration offered some protection from persecution. These new Jews came hoping to create a new future in what they regarded as the homeland of their ancestors. Organizations created to aid the Jewish migration to Palestine also bought land from absentee landowners. Jewish immigrants then settled on the land, sometimes replacing peasants already living there. A steady arrival of Jewish immigrants from 1882 led to several peasant insurgencies, recorded from as early as 1884-1886.
in 1922, which remained in effect until the establishment of Israel
in 1948. During this period several new land laws were introduced, including The Land Transfer Ordinance of 1920, The Correction of Land Registers Ordinance of 1926 and The Land Settlement Ordinance of 1928.
It was the policy of the Zionist Organisation to encourage Jewish acquisition of land in Palestine for Jewish settlement. For that purpose, the Fifth Zionist Congress (1901)
set up the Jewish National Fund (JNF)
to buy suitable land. The rules of the JNF forbade it from selling the land it acquired, but to lease it. Land owned by the JNF was leased to kibbutzim and other Jewish settlements on long-term leases. At the end of 1935, JNF held 89,500 acres (362 km²) of land housing 108 Jewish communities. In 1939, 10% of the Jewish population of the British Mandate of Palestine lived on JNF land. JNF holdings by the end of the British Mandate period amounted to 936 km². By 1948, the JNF owned 54% of the land held by Jews in the region, or a bit less than 4% of the land in Palestine (excluding Transjordan
).
In the meantime, from 1936, the British administration introduced a series of land regulations. The Land Transfer Regulations of 1940 divided the country into zones, with different restrictions on land sales in each. As summarized by the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry
in 1946,
In 1960, under Basic Law
: Israel Lands, JNF-owned land and government-owned land were together defined as "Israel lands," and the principle was laid down that such land would be leased rather than sold. The JNF retained ownership of its land, but administrative responsibility for the JNF land and government-owned land,passed to a newly created agency called the Israel Land Administration
or ILA. The lease principle is hardly new to the area however as it was practiced for centuries under the Ottoman
tapu
system. To this day, the Land Registration
Office is commonly known in Israel as the tabu, the Arabic
pronunciation of the Turkish
tapu.
and sections 13 and 15 of the 1941 Immigration Ordinance. It also repealed the 1940 Land Transfer Regulations retroactively to 18 May 1939, invalidating transactions conducted since then.
, Israel gained additional land. The Area of Jurisdiction and Powers Ordinance, 5708-1948, extended Israeli land laws to "any part of Palestine which the Minister of Defence has defined by proclamation as being held by the Defence Army of Israel"
Article 3 of the law made it retroactive and effective from 15 May 1948, the day of the establishment of Israel.
According to Kirshbaum, the Law has as effect that "no one is allowed in or out without permission from the Israeli Military". "This regulation has been used to exclude a land owner from his own land so that it could be judged as unoccupied, and then expropriated under the Land Acquisition (Validation of Acts and Compensation) Law (1953) (see below). Closures need not be published in the Official Gazette".
permanently live in, enter, or be in said zone. According to COHRE and BADIL (p. 40), "this measure was used extensively in various parts of the country, including areas in the Galilee, near the Gaza Strip and close to the borders. Lands so acquired would often be sold to the JNF. These regulations remained in place until 1972."
Article 4 reads:
COHRE and BADIL (p. 40) consider that "this law operated in conjunction with other laws including those declaring ‘security areas’. Once
people (Arabs) were barred from their lands, these could be defined as ‘uncultivated’ and seized".
The law includes clauses concerning the requisition of houses (chapter three), and states (Article 22b) that:
According to COHRE and BADIL (p. 41), "the law retroactively legalised land and housing requisitions that were carried out under existing emergency regulations. The law was amended in 1952 and 1953. A 1955 amendment, Land Requisition Regulation (Temporary Provision) Law, 5715- 1955, allows the Government to retain property seized under the law for longer than the three years originally specified. Along with a later (1957) amendment, the law also specified that any property held after 1956 would be determined to have
been acquired on the basis of the British Land (Acquisition for Public Purposes) Ordinance of 1943.
According to COHRE and BADIL (p. 41), unlike other laws that were designed to establish Israel’s ‘legal’ control over lands, this body of law focused on formulating a ‘legal’ definition for the people (mostly Arabs) who had left or been forced to flee from these lands. Specific laws in this category include:
As a result, two million dunam
s were confiscated and given to the custodian, who later transferred the land to the development authority. This law created the novel citizenship category of "present absentees" (nifkadim nohahim), persons present at the time but considered absent for the purpose of the law. These Israeli Arabs enjoyed all civil rights-including the right to vote in the Knesset
elections-except one: the right to use and dispose of their property". About 30,000-35,000 Palestinians became "present absentees".
According to Flapan
, "a detailed account of exactly how "abandoned" Arab property assisted in the absorption of the new immigrants was prepared by Joseph Schechtman
:
How much of Israel's territory consists of land confiscated with the Absentee Property Law is uncertain and much disputed. Robert Fisk
interviewed the Israeli Custodian of Absentee Property, who estimates this could amount to up to 70% of the territory of Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip:
The Jewish Virtual Library
, estimates that Custodial and Absentee land comprises 12% of Israel's total territory.
The Jewish National Fund, from Jewish Villages in Israel, 1949:
The absentee property played an enormous role in making Israel a viable state. In 1954, more than one third of Israel's Jewish population lived on absentee property and nearly a third of the new immigrants (250,000 people) settled in urban areas abandoned by Arabs. Of 370 new Jewish settlements established between 1948 and 1953, 350 were on absentee property (Peretz, Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, 1958).
(p. 84), the definition of "absentee" in the law was framed in such a way as to ensure that it applied to every Palestinian or resident in Palestine who had left his usual place of residence in Palestine for any place inside or outside the country after the adoption of the partition of Palestine resolution by the UN. Article 1(b) states that "absentee" means:
According to COHRE and BADIL (p. 41), the provisions in the law made sure that the term 'person' did not apply to Jews. The law also applied to Arabs who had become citizens of the State of Israel but were not in their usual place of residence as defined by the law. In this case, they were referred to as 'present absentees' and many lost their lands.
The Law then appointed a Custodianship Council for Absentees' Property, whose president was to be known as the Custodian of Absentees' Property (Article 2). The law then made these properties the legal holdings of the Custodian. According to Art. 4.(a)(2):
According to COHRE and BADIL (p. 41), those who were found to occupy property in violation of this law could be expelled, and those who built on such property could have their structures demolished. The law came to apply not only to Palestinians who fled but
also to those who were away from their regular places of residence (as described in the previous paragraph).
According to the Israel Government Yearbook, 5719 (1958) (p. 235), the "village properties" of absentee Arabs "which was appropriated by the Custodian of Absentees' Property" included "[the land of] some 350 completely abandoned or semi-abandoned [Arab] villages, the aggregate area of which was about three-quarters of a million dunums .... Among the agricultural properties were 80,000 dunums of abandoned groves... [and] more than 200,000 dunums of plantations were taken over by the custodian. "It was estimated that "the urban properties ... include[d] 25,416 buildings in which there are 57,497 dwellings and 10,727 business and trade premises."
According to COHRE and BADIL (p. 41), "estimates of the total amount of ‘abandoned’ lands to which Israel laid claim vary between 4.2 and 5.8 million dunum (4 200-5 800 km²). Between 1948 and 1953 alone, 350 of the 370 new Jewish settlements were created on lands confiscated under the Absentees’ Property Law."
The Absentees’ Property Law underwent several amendments, including:
Both amendments clarifying rental arrangements and tenant protection rights on such property.
This law legalised expropriations (retroactively in many cases) for military purposes or for the establishment of (Jewish)
settlements.
The law allows the Government to claim the property of lands which are not in the possession of its owner as of 1 April 1952. Article 2 (a) states:
The further states the monetary compensation for those losing their lands and that in the case were the lands corresponded to agricultural lands, where those lands formed their main source of livelihood, lands elsewhere would be offered. Article 3 reads:
According to Kedar (p. 153), until 1959, compensation was calculated on the basis of the 1950 land values. The author cites a 1965 ILA report which shows that over 1.2 million dunum (about 1 200 km²) of Arab land were taken in this manner.
. Article 29A (c) states:
According to COHRE and BADIL (p. 41), it allows the Government to confiscate vast amounts of Muslim
(charity) land and other properties, including cemeteries
and mosque
s, and place them under Government administration. According to the law, income from these properties would be used in part to build institutions and provide services for the Muslim inhabitants in areas where such property is located. The law amends the 1950 law in the following way:
According to Benvenisti:
Other provisions specify the time limit legally allowed for filing a claim, whether compensation would be awarded in cash or bonds (depending on circumstances), the payment schedule (generally over a fifteen year period) and other provisions. Appended to the law is a detailed schedule of how compensation is to be calculated for each type of property, urban or agricultural. Some provisions of this law were amended in later years.
). These included building Government offices, creating lands and parks, and suchlike. Kedar (p. 155) describes this law as “the main general land expropriation law in force in Israel today”.
A 1964 amendment to this law, Acquisition for Public Purposes (Amendment of Provisions) Law, 5724-1964, specifies procedures to be followed in the acquisition of lands based on this and other laws, including the original Land (Acquisition for Public Purposes) Ordinance (1943), the Town Planning Ordinance (1936), and the Roads and Railways (Defence and Development) Ordinance (1943).
The 1964 amendment also defines circumstances under which no compensation would be offered to those whose lands had been expropriated; generally, where the expropriation had occurred prior to the coming into force of this law. Additional amendments corrected various laws under which such lands might be expropriated, substituting Israeli laws for earlier British versions and clarifying rights to compensation.
According to COHRE and BADIL (p. 43), Israel used this law extensively to expropriate Palestinians lands. Many Palestinians challenged the expropriations and did not accept compensation. A 1978 amendment to the law, Acquisition for Public Purposes (Amendment of Provisions) (Amendment No.3) Law, 5738-1978, addresses this issue by decreeing that where the owner refuses compensation or does not give consent within the time allotted, these funds would be deposited with the Administrator-General in the name of the owner. However, this provision has no bearing on the matter of the expropriation itself. According to the COHRE and BADIL study, lands acquired under this law were used for the building of new Jewish settlements or other ventures from which Arab Palestinians with Israeli citizenship were excluded. The Jewish-dominated sector of Upper Nazareth was created in this manner and was the subject of several lawsuits filed at the Supreme Court
.
According to Fast Magazine, with the law 40 percent of the owner’s land can be confiscated without compensation and public purposes are usually Jewish: From 1200 dunams confiscated in Nazareth for public purposes, 80 dunams were used for public buildings and the rest was used to build Jewish housing.
practices in relation to, the Ottoman Land Code (1858).
According to COHRE and BADIL (p. 44), the Prescription Law is one of the most critical to understanding the legal underpinnings of Israel’s acquisition of Palestinian lands. Although not readily apparent in the language of the law, the purpose behind this legislation was to enable Israel to claim as ‘State lands’ areas where Palestinians still predominated and where they could still assert their own claims on the land (for example, in the north of the country). The authors claim that this law, in conjunction with the Land (Settlement of Title) Ordinance (Amendment) Law, 5720-1960, the Land (Settlement of Title) Ordinance (New Version), 5729-1969 and the Land Law, 5729-1969, was designed to revise criteria related to the use and registration of Miri lands – one of the most prevalent types in Palestine – and to facilitate Israel’s acquisition of such land.
Under this law, farmers are required to submit documentation proving uninterrupted cultivation of designated plots of land
over a 15-year period (the ‘prescription’ period). Article 5 states:
The law adds the proviso that lands purchased after 1 March 1943 would be subject to a 20-year verification period. The law also specifies a five-year hiatus between 1958 and 1963 that would not be counted toward this ‘prescription’ period.
According to COHRE and BADIL, by 1963, much of the lands in question had still not been surveyed. Therefore, calculations of the requisite 20-year verification period were in effect halted, and the State was in a position to press its own claims to these lands. The authors consider that the Prescription Law had even more complex ramifications. For example, Israel decided that British aerial photographs of 1945 would be used to verify cultivation. Arab farmers who had not yet begun tilling their lands at the time
the photographs were taken found they were by definition unable to meet the requisite 15-year ‘prescription’ period. Also, as Israel did not accept other evidence of cultivation, such as tax records, many Palestinians fell victim to a ‘Catch-22’: in the process of trying to establish their legal ownership they (retroactively) lost their lands.
According to COHRE and BADIL a 1965 report by the Israeli Land Administration (ILA) reflects on the rationale behind the law:
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
. At its establishment, Israel continued to apply the pre-existing Ottoman
Tanzimat
The Tanzimât , meaning reorganization of the Ottoman Empire, was a period of reformation that began in 1839 and ended with the First Constitutional Era in 1876. The Tanzimât reform era was characterized by various attempts to modernize the Ottoman Empire, to secure its territorial integrity against...
and British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
land law. Over time, these laws were amended or replaced.
In 1945, of the 26.4 million dunam
Dunam
A dunam or dönüm, dunum, donum, dynym, dulum was a non-SI unit of land area used in the Ottoman Empire and representing the amount of land that can be plowed in a day; its value varied from 900–2500 m²...
s of land in Mandate Palestine
Mandate Palestine
Mandate Palestine existed while the British Mandate for Palestine, which formally began in September 1923 and terminated in May 1948, was in effect...
, 12.8 million was owned by Arabs, 1.5 million by Jews, 1.5 million was public land and 10.6 million constituted the desertic Beersheba district (Negev
Negev
The Negev is a desert and semidesert region of southern Israel. The Arabs, including the native Bedouin population of the region, refer to the desert as al-Naqab. The origin of the word Neghebh is from the Hebrew root denoting 'dry'...
). (There are 10 dunams in a hectare.) In terms of arable land, 7.8 million dunams was owned by Arabs, 1.2 million by Jews and 0.2 million was public land. By 1949, some 700,000 Palestinians had fled or been expelled from their lands and villages. Israel was now in control of some 20.5 million dunam
Dunam
A dunam or dönüm, dunum, donum, dynym, dulum was a non-SI unit of land area used in the Ottoman Empire and representing the amount of land that can be plowed in a day; its value varied from 900–2500 m²...
s (approx. 20 500 km²) or 78% of lands in what had been Mandate Palestine: 8% (approx. 1,650 km²) were privately controlled by Jews, 6% (approx. 1,300 km²) by Arabs, with the remaining 86% was public land.
The first challenge facing Israel was to transform its control over land into legal ownership, the motivation underlying the passing of several of the first group of land laws.
Today, the Israel Land Administration
Israel Land Administration
The Israel Land Administration is part of the government of Israel and is responsible for managing the 93% of the land in Israel which is in the public domain. These lands are either property of the state, belong to the Jewish National Fund which controls 13% of the land, or belong to the Israel...
(ILA) is responsible for managing the 93% of the land in Israel which is public land. Thirteen percent belong to the Jewish Nation Fund (JNF)
Jewish National Fund
The Jewish National Fund was founded in 1901 to buy and develop land in Ottoman Palestine for Jewish settlement. The JNF is a quasi-governmental, non-profit organisation...
,; the remainder is either state property or belongs to the Israel Development Authority. This land comprises 4820500 acres (19,507.9 km²). "Ownership" of real estate in Israel usually means leasing rights from the ILA for a period of 49 or 98 years. Under Israeli law, the ILA cannot lease land to foreign nationals, which includes Palestinian residents of Jerusalem who have identity cards but are not citizens of Israel. In practice, foreigners may be allowed to lease if they show that they would qualify as Jewish under the Law of Return
Law of Return
The Law of Return is Israeli legislation, passed on 5 July 1950, that gives Jews the right of return and settlement in Israel and gain citizenship...
.
Ottoman period
The Ottoman EmpireOttoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
embarked on a systematic land reform program in the second half of the 19th Century. Two of the new laws were the 1858 land registration law and the 1873 emancipation act.
Prior to 1858, land in Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
, then a part of the Ottoman Empire since 1516, was cultivated or occupied mainly by peasants. Land ownership was regulated by people living on the land according to customs and traditions. Usually, land was communally owned by village residents, though land could be owned by individuals or families.
In 1858 the Ottoman Empire introduced The Ottoman Land Code of 1858, requiring land owners to register ownership. The reasons behind the law were twofold. (1) to increase tax revenue, and (2) to exercise greater state control over the area. Peasants, however, saw no need to register claims, for several reasons:
- land owners were subject to military service in the Ottoman Army
- general opposition to official regulations from the Ottoman Empire
- evasion of taxes and registration fees to the Ottoman Empire
The registration process itself was open to misregistration and manipulation. Land collectively owned by village residents ended up registered to one villager, and merchants and local Ottoman administrators took the opportunity to register large areas of land to their own name. The result was land that became the legal property of people who had never lived on the land, while the peasants, having lived there for generations, retained possession, but became tenants of absentee owners.
The 1873 emancipation act gave Jews the right to own land in Palestine under their own name. The changing of this law (the change occurring at the same time as the freeing of the Africans in the United States and in South America and the emancipation of the serfs in Russia (held in slavery by the Russian landowning class) was a part of the worldwide 19th century movement towards emancipation and civil rights for oppressed minorities—-and Jews were very much oppressed legally in Palestine. This 1873 secular land reform/civil rights law was popularly confused with a religious law and it was held as a "humiliation to Islam that Jews should own a part of the Muslim Ummah
Ummah
Ummah is an Arabic word meaning "community" or "nation." It is commonly used to mean either the collective nation of states, or the whole Arab world...
". The confusion between religious and secular law made the laws (ended in 1873) against Jewish ownership of land 'religious laws'.
Over the course of the next decades land became increasingly concentrated on fewer hands; the peasants continued to work on the land, giving landlords a share of the harvest. This led to both an increased level of Palestinian nationalism
Palestinian nationalism
Palestinian nationalism is the national movement of the Palestinian people. It has roots in Pan-Arabism and other movements rejecting colonialism and calling for national independence. More recently, Palestinian Nationalism is expressed through the Israeli–Palestinian conflict...
as well as civil unrest. At the same time, the area witnessed an increased flow of Jewish immigrants who did not restrict themselves to the cities where their concentration offered some protection from persecution. These new Jews came hoping to create a new future in what they regarded as the homeland of their ancestors. Organizations created to aid the Jewish migration to Palestine also bought land from absentee landowners. Jewish immigrants then settled on the land, sometimes replacing peasants already living there. A steady arrival of Jewish immigrants from 1882 led to several peasant insurgencies, recorded from as early as 1884-1886.
Mandate period
World War I and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire led to British control over the area in 1917, followed by the creation of the Mandate for Palestine by the League of NationsLeague of Nations
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...
in 1922, which remained in effect until the establishment of Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
in 1948. During this period several new land laws were introduced, including The Land Transfer Ordinance of 1920, The Correction of Land Registers Ordinance of 1926 and The Land Settlement Ordinance of 1928.
It was the policy of the Zionist Organisation to encourage Jewish acquisition of land in Palestine for Jewish settlement. For that purpose, the Fifth Zionist Congress (1901)
Timeline of Zionism
This is a partial timeline of Zionism in the modern era, since the start of the 16th century.-16th–18th centuries:1561: Joseph Nasi encourages Jewish settlement in Tiberias, having fled the Spanish Inquisition fourteen years previously in 1547...
set up the Jewish National Fund (JNF)
Jewish National Fund
The Jewish National Fund was founded in 1901 to buy and develop land in Ottoman Palestine for Jewish settlement. The JNF is a quasi-governmental, non-profit organisation...
to buy suitable land. The rules of the JNF forbade it from selling the land it acquired, but to lease it. Land owned by the JNF was leased to kibbutzim and other Jewish settlements on long-term leases. At the end of 1935, JNF held 89,500 acres (362 km²) of land housing 108 Jewish communities. In 1939, 10% of the Jewish population of the British Mandate of Palestine lived on JNF land. JNF holdings by the end of the British Mandate period amounted to 936 km². By 1948, the JNF owned 54% of the land held by Jews in the region, or a bit less than 4% of the land in Palestine (excluding Transjordan
Transjordan
The Emirate of Transjordan was a former Ottoman territory in the Southern Levant that was part of the British Mandate of Palestine...
).
In the meantime, from 1936, the British administration introduced a series of land regulations. The Land Transfer Regulations of 1940 divided the country into zones, with different restrictions on land sales in each. As summarized by the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry
Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry
The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry was a joint British and American attempt in 1946 to agree upon a policy as regards the admission of Jews to Palestine. The Committee was tasked to consult representative Arabs and Jews on the problems of Palestine, and to make other recommendations 'as may be...
in 1946,
In Zone A, consisting of about 63 percent of the country including the stony hills, land transfers save to a Palestinian Arab were in general forbidden. In Zone B. consisting of about 32 percent of the country, transfers from a Palestinian Arab save to another Palestinian Arab were severely restricted at the discretion of the High Commissioner. In the remainder of Palestine, consisting of about five percent of the country-which, however, includes the most fertile areas- land sales remained unrestricted.The Inquiry recommended the repeal of the Regulations, without effect.
After the establishment of the state
After the declaration of independence on 14 May 1948, state lands of the former British Mandatory Authorities reverted to the State of Israel. In addition, property abandoned by Arab refugees passed into the control of the new Israeli government. The newly formed Israeli ministries, committees and departments had begun taking over functions performed earlier by ‘National Institutions’, that is, the JNF, the Jewish Agency (JA) and others. One of the first steps adopted by the new state was the reactivation of the Defence [Emergency] Regulations adopted earlier by the British in 1939 (and later repealed). Since British regulations had applied to the whole country, the Government of Israel passed the Law and Administration Ordinance [Amendment] Law [1948] to reverse the British repeal and reinstate these Emergency Regulations. Some of this land was sold by the government to the JNF, which had developed expertise in reclaiming and developing waste and barren lands and making them productive.In 1960, under Basic Law
Basic Laws of Israel
The Basic Laws of Israel are a key component of Israel's constitutional law. These laws deal with the formation and role of the principal state's institutions, and the relations between the state's authorities. Some of them also protect civil rights...
: Israel Lands, JNF-owned land and government-owned land were together defined as "Israel lands," and the principle was laid down that such land would be leased rather than sold. The JNF retained ownership of its land, but administrative responsibility for the JNF land and government-owned land,passed to a newly created agency called the Israel Land Administration
Israel Land Administration
The Israel Land Administration is part of the government of Israel and is responsible for managing the 93% of the land in Israel which is in the public domain. These lands are either property of the state, belong to the Jewish National Fund which controls 13% of the land, or belong to the Israel...
or ILA. The lease principle is hardly new to the area however as it was practiced for centuries under the Ottoman
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
tapu
Tapu (Ottoman history)
In the Ottoman Empire, tapu was a permanent lease of state-owned arable land to a peasant family. The family head acquired the usufruct of the land and was able to transmit this right to his male descendants upon his death...
system. To this day, the Land Registration
Land registration
Land registration generally describes systems by which matters concerning ownership, possession or other rights in land can be recorded to provide evidence of title, facilitate transactions and to prevent unlawful disposal...
Office is commonly known in Israel as the tabu, the Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
pronunciation of the Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
tapu.
Emergency laws and regulations
From the same day as the declaration of independence, Israel enacted laws relating to land ownership.Proclamation, 5708-1948
This proclamation repealed the White Paper of 1939White Paper of 1939
The White Paper of 1939, also known as the MacDonald White Paper after Malcolm MacDonald, the British Colonial Secretary who presided over it, was a policy paper issued by the British government under Neville Chamberlain in which the idea of partitioning the Mandate for Palestine, as recommended in...
and sections 13 and 15 of the 1941 Immigration Ordinance. It also repealed the 1940 Land Transfer Regulations retroactively to 18 May 1939, invalidating transactions conducted since then.
Law and Administration Ordinance, 5708-1948
The Law and Administration Ordinance, 5708-1948 defined the competences and composition of the Provisional Government. Among other aspects, the law repealed sections 13 to 15 of the 1941 Immigration Ordinance and regulations 102 to 107C of the 1945 Defence (Emergency) Regulations, in order to allow Jews who entered the country illegally under Mandate to remain as legal immigrants. The 1940 Land Transfers Regulations were repealed retroactively from 18 May 1939, to allow unregistered transfers to be filed.Area of Jurisdiction and Powers Ordinance, 5708-1948
During the 1948 Arab-Israeli war1948 Arab-Israeli War
The 1948 Arab–Israeli War, known to Israelis as the War of Independence or War of Liberation The war commenced after the termination of the British Mandate for Palestine and the creation of an independent Israel at midnight on 14 May 1948 when, following a period of civil war, Arab armies invaded...
, Israel gained additional land. The Area of Jurisdiction and Powers Ordinance, 5708-1948, extended Israeli land laws to "any part of Palestine which the Minister of Defence has defined by proclamation as being held by the Defence Army of Israel"
Article 3 of the law made it retroactive and effective from 15 May 1948, the day of the establishment of Israel.
Abandoned Areas Ordinance, 5708-1948
The Abandoned Areas Ordinance, 5708-1948 defined an "abandoned area" as "any area or place conquered by or surrendered to armed forces or deserted by all or part of its inhabitants, and which has been declared by order to be an abandoned area." All properties in these areas was also declared ‘abandoned’ and the Government was authorised to issue instructions as to the disposition of the properties.Defence (Emergency) Regulations http://web.archive.org/web/20091028101623/http://geocities.com/savepalestinenow/emergencyregs/essays/emergencyregsessay.htm
Article 125
Article 125 states:A Military Commander may by order declare any area or place to be a closed area for the purposes of these Regulations. Any person who, during any period in which any such order is in force in relation to any area or place, enters or leaves that area or place without a permit in writing issued by or on behalf of the Military Commander shall be guilty of an offence against these Regulations.
According to Kirshbaum, the Law has as effect that "no one is allowed in or out without permission from the Israeli Military". "This regulation has been used to exclude a land owner from his own land so that it could be judged as unoccupied, and then expropriated under the Land Acquisition (Validation of Acts and Compensation) Law (1953) (see below). Closures need not be published in the Official Gazette".
Emergency Regulations (Security Zones) Law, 5709-1949
According to the Journal of Palestine Studies, the law designated an area as "security zone" which meant that no one couldpermanently live in, enter, or be in said zone. According to COHRE and BADIL (p. 40), "this measure was used extensively in various parts of the country, including areas in the Galilee, near the Gaza Strip and close to the borders. Lands so acquired would often be sold to the JNF. These regulations remained in place until 1972."
Emergency Regulations (Cultivation of Waste [Uncultivated] Lands) Law, 5709-1949 http://web.archive.org/web/20091028131241/http://geocities.com/savepalestinenow/emergencyregs/fulltext/erwastelandcultivationeov.htm
According to COHRE and BADIL (p. 40) this law was originally enacted in 1948 and amended in 1951 as the Emergency Regulations (Cultivation of Waste Lands) Law, 5711-1951. This law authorises the Ministry of Agriculture to declare lands as ‘waste’ lands (Article 2) and to take control over ‘uncultivated’ lands (Article 4). Article 2 states:The Minister of Agriculture may warn the owner of waste land to cultivate the land or to ensure-that it is cultivated.
Article 4 reads:
If the owner of the waste land does not apply to the Minister of Agriculture as specified in regulation 3, or if the Minister of Agriculture is not satisfied that the owner of the land has begun or is about to begin or will continue to cultivate the land, the Minister of Agriculture may assume control of the land in order to ensure its cultivation.
COHRE and BADIL (p. 40) consider that "this law operated in conjunction with other laws including those declaring ‘security areas’. Once
people (Arabs) were barred from their lands, these could be defined as ‘uncultivated’ and seized".
Emergency Land Requisition (Regulation) Law, 5710-1949 http://web.archive.org/web/20091028131241/http://geocities.com/savepalestinenow/emergencyregs/fulltext/emergencylandreglaw.htm
This law repeals the earlier Emergency Regulations (Requisition of Property) Law, 5709-1948. The law authorises the requisition of land when (Article 3):...the making of the order is necessary for the defence of the state, public security, the maintenance of essential supplies or essential public services, the absorption of immigrants or the rehabilitation of ex-soldiers or war invalids.
The law includes clauses concerning the requisition of houses (chapter three), and states (Article 22b) that:
A competent authority may use force to the extent required for the carrying into effect of an order made by a competent authority or a decision given by an appeal committee under this Law.
According to COHRE and BADIL (p. 41), "the law retroactively legalised land and housing requisitions that were carried out under existing emergency regulations. The law was amended in 1952 and 1953. A 1955 amendment, Land Requisition Regulation (Temporary Provision) Law, 5715- 1955, allows the Government to retain property seized under the law for longer than the three years originally specified. Along with a later (1957) amendment, the law also specified that any property held after 1956 would be determined to have
been acquired on the basis of the British Land (Acquisition for Public Purposes) Ordinance of 1943.
The 'Absentees Property Law'
‘Absentees’ property’ laws were several laws which were first introduced as emergency ordinances issued by the Jewish leadership but which after the war were incorporated into the laws of Israel. As examples of the first type of laws are the Emergency Regulations (Absentees’ Property) Law, 5709-1948 (December) which according to article 37 of the Absentees Property Law, 5710-1950 was replaced by the latter; the Emergency Regulations (Requisition of Property) Law, 5709-1949, and other related laws.According to COHRE and BADIL (p. 41), unlike other laws that were designed to establish Israel’s ‘legal’ control over lands, this body of law focused on formulating a ‘legal’ definition for the people (mostly Arabs) who had left or been forced to flee from these lands. Specific laws in this category include:
- The Absentees’ Property Law, 5710- 1950
- The Land Acquisition (Validation of Acts and Compensation) Law, 5713-1953
- Absentees’ Property (Eviction) Law, 5718-1958
- Absentees’ Property (Amendment No.3) (Release and Use of Endowment Property) Law, 5725-1965
- Absentees’ Property (Amendment No. 4) (Release and Use of Property of Evangelical Episcopal Church) Law, 5727-1967
- Absentees’ Property (Compensation) Law, 5733-1973
As a result, two million dunam
Dunam
A dunam or dönüm, dunum, donum, dynym, dulum was a non-SI unit of land area used in the Ottoman Empire and representing the amount of land that can be plowed in a day; its value varied from 900–2500 m²...
s were confiscated and given to the custodian, who later transferred the land to the development authority. This law created the novel citizenship category of "present absentees" (nifkadim nohahim), persons present at the time but considered absent for the purpose of the law. These Israeli Arabs enjoyed all civil rights-including the right to vote in the Knesset
Knesset
The Knesset is the unicameral legislature of Israel, located in Givat Ram, Jerusalem.-Role in Israeli Government :The legislative branch of the Israeli government, the Knesset passes all laws, elects the President and Prime Minister , approves the cabinet, and supervises the work of the government...
elections-except one: the right to use and dispose of their property". About 30,000-35,000 Palestinians became "present absentees".
According to Flapan
Simha Flapan
Simha Flapan was an Israeli historian and politician. He was the author of The Birth of Israel: Myths And Realities.He is probably best known for his book The Birth of Israel: Myths And Realities, published in the year of his death....
, "a detailed account of exactly how "abandoned" Arab property assisted in the absorption of the new immigrants was prepared by Joseph Schechtman
Joseph Schechtman
Joseph Boris Schechtman was a writer and Revisionist political activist. He was the author of several books of history, including The Arab Refugee Problem , and a two-volume biography of Vladimir Jabotinsky, The Life and Times of Vladimar Jabotinsky. Rebel and Statesman: The Early Years and...
:
It is difficult to overestimate the tremendous role this lot of abandoned Arab property has played in the settlement of hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants who have reached Israel since the proclamation of the state in May 1948. Forty-seven new rural settlements established on the sites of abandoned Arab villages had by October 1949 already absorbed 25,255 new immigrants. By the spring of 1950 over 1 million dunams had been leased by the custodian to Jewish settlements and individual farmers for the raising of grain crops.
Large tracts of land belonging to Arab absentees have also been leased to Jewish settlers, old and new, for the raising of vegetables. In the south alone, 15,000 dunams of vineyards and fruit trees have been leased to cooperative settlements; a similar area has been rented by the Yemenites Association, the Farmers Association, and the Soldiers Settlement and Rehabilitation Board. This has saved the Jewish Agency and the government millions of dollars. While the average cost of establishing an immigrant family in a new settlement was from $7,500 to $9,000, the cost in abandoned Arab villages did not exceed $1,500 ($750 for building repairs and $750 for livestock and equipment).
Abandoned Arab dwellings in towns have also not remained empty. By the end of July 1948, 170,000 people, notably new immigrants and ex-soldiers, in addition to about 40,000 former tenants, both Jewish and Arab, had been housed in premises under the custodian's control; and 7,000 shops, workshops and stores were sublet to new arrivals. The existence of these Arab houses-vacant and ready for occupation-has, to a large extent, solved the greatest immediate problem which faced the Israeli authorities in the absorption of immigrants. It also considerably relieved the financial burden of absorption.
How much of Israel's territory consists of land confiscated with the Absentee Property Law is uncertain and much disputed. Robert Fisk
Robert Fisk
Robert Fisk is an English writer and journalist from Maidstone, Kent. As Middle East correspondent of The Independent, he has primarily been based in Beirut for more than 30 years. He has published a number of books and has reported on the United States's war in Afghanistan and the same country's...
interviewed the Israeli Custodian of Absentee Property, who estimates this could amount to up to 70% of the territory of Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip:
- The Custodian of Absentee Property does not choose to discuss politics. But when asked how much of the land of the state of Israel might potentially have two claimants - an Arab and a Jew holding respectively a British Mandate and an Israeli deed to the same property - Mr. Manor [the Custodian in 1980] believes that 'about 70 percent' might fall into that category (Robert FiskRobert FiskRobert Fisk is an English writer and journalist from Maidstone, Kent. As Middle East correspondent of The Independent, he has primarily been based in Beirut for more than 30 years. He has published a number of books and has reported on the United States's war in Afghanistan and the same country's...
, 'The Land of Palestine, Part Eight: The Custodian of Absentee Property', The Times, December 24, 1980, quoted in his book Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War).
The Jewish Virtual Library
Jewish Virtual Library
Jewish Virtual Library is an online encyclopedia published by the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise . Established in 1993, it is a comprehensive website covering Israel, the Jewish people, and Jewish culture.-History:...
, estimates that Custodial and Absentee land comprises 12% of Israel's total territory.
The Jewish National Fund, from Jewish Villages in Israel, 1949:
Of the entire area of the State of Israel only about 300,000-400,000 dunums -- apart from the desolate rocky area of the southern Negev, at present quite unfit for cultivation -- are State Domain which the Israeli Government took over from the Mandatory regime. The J.N.F. and private Jewish owners possess under two million dunums. Almost all the rest belongs at law to Arab owners, many of whom have left the country. The fate of these Arabs will be settled when the terms of the peace treaties between Israel and her Arab neighbours are finally drawn up. The J.N.F., however, cannot wait until then to obtain the land it requires for its pressing needs. It is, therefore, acquiring part of the land abandoned by the Arab owners, through the Government of Israel, the sovereign authority in Israel.
Whatever the ultimate fate of the Arabs concerned, it is manifest that their legal right to their land and property in Israel, or to the monetary value of them, will not be waived, nor do the Jews wish to ignore them. ... [C]onquest by force of arms cannot, in law or in ethics, abrogate the rights of the legal owner to his personal property. The J.N.F., therefore, will pay for the lands it takes over, at a fixed and fair price.
The absentee property played an enormous role in making Israel a viable state. In 1954, more than one third of Israel's Jewish population lived on absentee property and nearly a third of the new immigrants (250,000 people) settled in urban areas abandoned by Arabs. Of 370 new Jewish settlements established between 1948 and 1953, 350 were on absentee property (Peretz, Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, 1958).
The Absentees’ Property Law, 5710- 1950
This law replaced the Emergency Regulations (Absentees’ Property) Law, 5709-1948. According to JiryisSabri Jiryis
Sabri Jiryis is a Palestinian-Arab Israeli writer and lawyer, a graduate of the Hebrew University law faculty, and prominent Palestinian activist. In 1966 the first edition of his book The Arabs in Israel was published in Hebrew.- Arrest in Israel :He was given an "Administrative House Arrest"...
(p. 84), the definition of "absentee" in the law was framed in such a way as to ensure that it applied to every Palestinian or resident in Palestine who had left his usual place of residence in Palestine for any place inside or outside the country after the adoption of the partition of Palestine resolution by the UN. Article 1(b) states that "absentee" means:
"absentee" means -
(1) a person who, at any time during the period between the 16th Kislev, 5708 (29th November, 1947) and the day on which a declaration is published, under section 9(d) of the Law and Administration Ordinance, 5708-1948(1), that the state of emergency declared by the Provisional Council of State on the 10th Iyar, 5708 (19th May, 1948)
(2) has ceased to exist, was a legal owner of any property situated in the area of Israel or enjoyed or held it, whether by himself or through another, and who, at any time during the said period - was a national or citizen of the Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, SaudiArabia, Trans-Jordan, Iraq or the Yemen, or was in one of these countries or in any part of Palestine outside the area of Israel, or was a Palestinian citizen and left his ordinary place of residence in Palestine
- (a) for a place outside Palestine before the 27th Av, 5708 (1st September, 1948); or
- (b) for a place in Palestine held at the time by forces which sought to prevent the establishment of the State of Israel or which fought against it after its establishment;
(2) a body of persons which, at any time during the period specified in paragraph (1), was a legal owner of any property situated in the area of Israel or enjoyed or held such property, whether by itself or through another, and all the members, partners, shareholders, directors or managers of which are absentees within the meaning of paragraph (1), or the management of the business of which is otherwise decisively controlled by such absentees, or all the capital of which is in the hands of such absentees;
According to COHRE and BADIL (p. 41), the provisions in the law made sure that the term 'person' did not apply to Jews. The law also applied to Arabs who had become citizens of the State of Israel but were not in their usual place of residence as defined by the law. In this case, they were referred to as 'present absentees' and many lost their lands.
The Law then appointed a Custodianship Council for Absentees' Property, whose president was to be known as the Custodian of Absentees' Property (Article 2). The law then made these properties the legal holdings of the Custodian. According to Art. 4.(a)(2):
every right an absentee had in any property shall pass automatically to the Custodian at the time of the vesting of the property; and the status of the Custodian shall be the same as was that of the owner of the property.
According to COHRE and BADIL (p. 41), those who were found to occupy property in violation of this law could be expelled, and those who built on such property could have their structures demolished. The law came to apply not only to Palestinians who fled but
also to those who were away from their regular places of residence (as described in the previous paragraph).
According to the Israel Government Yearbook, 5719 (1958) (p. 235), the "village properties" of absentee Arabs "which was appropriated by the Custodian of Absentees' Property" included "[the land of] some 350 completely abandoned or semi-abandoned [Arab] villages, the aggregate area of which was about three-quarters of a million dunums .... Among the agricultural properties were 80,000 dunums of abandoned groves... [and] more than 200,000 dunums of plantations were taken over by the custodian. "It was estimated that "the urban properties ... include[d] 25,416 buildings in which there are 57,497 dwellings and 10,727 business and trade premises."
According to COHRE and BADIL (p. 41), "estimates of the total amount of ‘abandoned’ lands to which Israel laid claim vary between 4.2 and 5.8 million dunum (4 200-5 800 km²). Between 1948 and 1953 alone, 350 of the 370 new Jewish settlements were created on lands confiscated under the Absentees’ Property Law."
The Absentees’ Property Law underwent several amendments, including:
- The Absentees’ Property (Amendment) Law, 5711-1951http://web.archive.org/web/20091028101705/http://geocities.com/savepalestinenow/israellaws/fulltext/absenteepropertyl510306.htm,
- The Absentees’ Property (Amendment) Law, 5716-1956http://web.archive.org/web/20091028101704/http://geocities.com/savepalestinenow/israellaws/fulltext/absenteepropertyl560214.htm.
Both amendments clarifying rental arrangements and tenant protection rights on such property.
- The Absentees’ Property (Amendment No. 5) (Increase of Payment to Absentees’ Dependants and to Absentees) Law, 5727-1967http://web.archive.org/web/20091028101713/http://geocities.com/savepalestinenow/israellaws/fulltext/absenteepropertyl670807.htm and subsequent amendments to the latter.
The Land Acquisition (Validation of Acts and Compensation) Law, 5713-1953http://web.archive.org/web/20091028101641/http://geocities.com/savepalestinenow/israellaws/fulltext/landacquisitionlaw.htm
According to COHRE and BADIL (p. 42), the Government of Israel did not automatically gain title to lands seized under the Absentees’ Property Law. This was accomplished under the Land Acquisition (Validation of Acts and Compensation) Law, 5713-1953.This law legalised expropriations (retroactively in many cases) for military purposes or for the establishment of (Jewish)
settlements.
The law allows the Government to claim the property of lands which are not in the possession of its owner as of 1 April 1952. Article 2 (a) states:
Property in respect of which the Minister certifies by certificate under his hand-- that on the 6th Nisan, 5712 (1st April, 1952) it was not in the possession of its owners; and that within the period between the 5th Iyar, 5708 (14th May, 1948) and the 6th Nisan, 5712 (Ist April 1952) it was used or assigned for purposes of essential development, settlement or security; and that it is still required for any of these purposes
The further states the monetary compensation for those losing their lands and that in the case were the lands corresponded to agricultural lands, where those lands formed their main source of livelihood, lands elsewhere would be offered. Article 3 reads:
(a) The owners of acquired property are entitled to compensation therefore from the Development Authority. The compensation shall be given in money, unless otherwise agreed between the owners and the Development Authority. The amount of compensation shall be fixed by agreement between the Development Authority and the owners or, in the absence of agreement, by the Court, as hereinafter provided.
(b) Where the acquired property was used for agriculture and was the main source of livelihood of its owner, and he has no other land sufficient for his livelihood, the Development Authority shall, on his demand, offer him other property, either for ownership or for lease, as full or partial compensation. A competent authority, to be appointed for this purpose by the Minister, shall, in accordance with rules to be prescribed by regulations, determine the category, location, area, and, in the case of lease, period of lease (not less than 49 years) and the value of the offered property, both for the purpose of calculating the compensation and for determination of the sufficiency of such property for a livelihood.
(c) The provisions of subsection (b) shall add to, and not derogate from, the provisions of subsection (a).
According to Kedar (p. 153), until 1959, compensation was calculated on the basis of the 1950 land values. The author cites a 1965 ILA report which shows that over 1.2 million dunum (about 1 200 km²) of Arab land were taken in this manner.
The Absentees’ Property (Amendment No.3) (Release and Use of Endowment Property) Law, 5725-1965http://web.archive.org/web/20091028101706/http://geocities.com/savepalestinenow/israellaws/fulltext/absenteepropertyl650202.htm
This law extends the scope of the Absentees’ Property Law and earlier regulations concerning the Muslim religious endowment, the WaqfWaqf
A waqf also spelled wakf formally known as wakf-alal-aulad is an inalienable religious endowment in Islamic law, typically denoting a building or plot of land for Muslim religious or charitable purposes. The donated assets are held by a charitable trust...
. Article 29A (c) states:
For the purposes of this section and of sections 29B to 29H, "endowment property" means Muslim waqf property being immovable property validly dedicated.
According to COHRE and BADIL (p. 41), it allows the Government to confiscate vast amounts of Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
(charity) land and other properties, including cemeteries
Cemetery
A cemetery is a place in which dead bodies and cremated remains are buried. The term "cemetery" implies that the land is specifically designated as a burying ground. Cemeteries in the Western world are where the final ceremonies of death are observed...
and mosque
Mosque
A mosque is a place of worship for followers of Islam. The word is likely to have entered the English language through French , from Portuguese , from Spanish , and from Berber , ultimately originating in — . The Arabic word masjid literally means a place of prostration...
s, and place them under Government administration. According to the law, income from these properties would be used in part to build institutions and provide services for the Muslim inhabitants in areas where such property is located. The law amends the 1950 law in the following way:
In section 4 of the Absentees' Property Law, 5710-1950(1) (hereinafter referred to as "the principal Law"), the following subsection shall be inserted after subsection (a): Where any property is an endowment under any law, the ownership thereof shall vest in the Custodian free from any restriction, qualification or other similar limitation prescribed, whether before or after the vesting, by or under any law or document relating to the endowment if the owner of the property, or the person having possession or the right of management of the property, or the beneficiary of the endowment, is an absentee. The vesting shall be as from the 10th Kislev, 5709 (12th December, 1948) or from the day on which one of the aforementioned becomes an absentee, whichever is the later date. The provisions of this subsection shall not void any restriction, qualification or other similar limitation prescribed by or under this Law or imposed by the Custodian and shall not void any transactions effected by him.".
(b) This section shall have effect retroactively as from the date of the coming into force of the principal Law.
According to Benvenisti:
"Most Waqf property in Israel was expropriated under the Absentee proberty Law (giving rise to the sarcastic quip -"Apparently God is an absentee [in Israel]") and afterward handed over to the Development Authority, ostensibly because this was necessary to prevent its being neglected, but actually so as to make it possible to sell it. Only about one-third of Muslim Waqf property, principally mosques and graveyards that were currently in use, was not expropriated. In 1956 its administration was turned over to the Board of Trustees of the Muslim Waqf, which by then was made up of collaboratorsCollaborationismCollaborationism is cooperation with enemy forces against one's country. Legally, it may be considered as a form of treason. Collaborationism may be associated with criminal deeds in the service of the occupying power, which may include complicity with the occupying power in murder, persecutions,...
appointed by the authorities. These "trustees" would sell or "exchange" land with the ILAIsrael Land AdministrationThe Israel Land Administration is part of the government of Israel and is responsible for managing the 93% of the land in Israel which is in the public domain. These lands are either property of the state, belong to the Jewish National Fund which controls 13% of the land, or belong to the Israel...
without any accountability to the Muslim community. Anger over these deeds led to acts of violence within the community, including assassinations.".
The Absentees’ Property (Compensation) Law, 5733-1973https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Peace/absentee.html
This law establishes the procedure to compensate owners of lands which have been confiscated under the Absentees’ Property Law (1950). It establishes the requirements to be eligible for compensation (Article 1):The persons entitled to compensation are all those who were Israel residents on 1 July 1973, or became residents thereafter, and prior to the property becoming vested in the Custodian of Absentees' Property were
- 1.the owners of property, including their heirs, or
- 2.the tenants only of urban property, including spouses living with them at the last mentioned date, or
- 3.the lessees of property, or
- 4.the owners of any easement in property.
Other provisions specify the time limit legally allowed for filing a claim, whether compensation would be awarded in cash or bonds (depending on circumstances), the payment schedule (generally over a fifteen year period) and other provisions. Appended to the law is a detailed schedule of how compensation is to be calculated for each type of property, urban or agricultural. Some provisions of this law were amended in later years.
Land (Acquisition for Public Purposes) Ordinance (1943)
This ordinance was originally enacted by the British in 1943 and later used by Israel to authorise the confiscation of lands for Government and ‘public’ purposes (see eminent domainEminent domain
Eminent domain , compulsory purchase , resumption/compulsory acquisition , or expropriation is an action of the state to seize a citizen's private property, expropriate property, or seize a citizen's rights in property with due monetary compensation, but without the owner's consent...
). These included building Government offices, creating lands and parks, and suchlike. Kedar (p. 155) describes this law as “the main general land expropriation law in force in Israel today”.
A 1964 amendment to this law, Acquisition for Public Purposes (Amendment of Provisions) Law, 5724-1964, specifies procedures to be followed in the acquisition of lands based on this and other laws, including the original Land (Acquisition for Public Purposes) Ordinance (1943), the Town Planning Ordinance (1936), and the Roads and Railways (Defence and Development) Ordinance (1943).
The 1964 amendment also defines circumstances under which no compensation would be offered to those whose lands had been expropriated; generally, where the expropriation had occurred prior to the coming into force of this law. Additional amendments corrected various laws under which such lands might be expropriated, substituting Israeli laws for earlier British versions and clarifying rights to compensation.
According to COHRE and BADIL (p. 43), Israel used this law extensively to expropriate Palestinians lands. Many Palestinians challenged the expropriations and did not accept compensation. A 1978 amendment to the law, Acquisition for Public Purposes (Amendment of Provisions) (Amendment No.3) Law, 5738-1978, addresses this issue by decreeing that where the owner refuses compensation or does not give consent within the time allotted, these funds would be deposited with the Administrator-General in the name of the owner. However, this provision has no bearing on the matter of the expropriation itself. According to the COHRE and BADIL study, lands acquired under this law were used for the building of new Jewish settlements or other ventures from which Arab Palestinians with Israeli citizenship were excluded. The Jewish-dominated sector of Upper Nazareth was created in this manner and was the subject of several lawsuits filed at the Supreme Court
Supreme Court of Israel
The Supreme Court is at the head of the court system and highest judicial instance in Israel. The Supreme Court sits in Jerusalem.The area of its jurisdiction is all of Israel and the Israeli-occupied territories. A ruling of the Supreme Court is binding upon every court, other than the Supreme...
.
According to Fast Magazine, with the law 40 percent of the owner’s land can be confiscated without compensation and public purposes are usually Jewish: From 1200 dunams confiscated in Nazareth for public purposes, 80 dunams were used for public buildings and the rest was used to build Jewish housing.
Jerusalem Military Government (Validation of Acts) Ordinance, 5709-1949
According to COHRE and BADIL (p. 41), this law extends Israeli jurisdiction to ‘the Occupied Area of Jerusalem’ (the western part of Jerusalem that was incorporated into Israel in 1948). It declares that all orders and regulations enacted by the Military Governor or other Government ministries shall be given the force of law.Development Authority (Transfer of Property) Law, 5710-1950http://web.archive.org/web/20091028101641/http://geocities.com/savepalestinenow/israellaws/fulltext/devauthoritylaw.htm
According to COHRE and BADIL (p. 42), the ‘Authority for the Development of the Country’ (or the ‘Development Authority’) was established to work with relevant Government agencies to acquire and prepare lands for the benefit of newly arriving Jewish immigrants. Vast amounts of land allocated for this purpose were bought from the ‘Custodian of Absentee Property’. Pursuant to this law, lands passing into the hands of the State or to JNF control would be deemed inalienable. Article 3(4)(a) reads:The Development Authority is competent:
- to sell or otherwise dispose of, let, grant leases of, and mortgage property;provided that
- (a) the Development Authority shall not be authorised to sell, or otherwise transfer the right of ownership of, property passing into public ownership, except to the State, to the Jewish National Fund, to an institution approved by the Government, for the purposes of this paragraph, as an institution for the settlement of landless Arabs, or to a local authority; the right of ownership of land so acquired may not be re-transferred except, with the consent of the Development Authority, to one of the bodies mentioned in this subparagraph;
- (b) the Development Authority shall not be authorised to sell immovable property not being land passing into public ownership, unless such property has first been offered to the Jewish National Fund, and the Jewish National Fund has not agreed to acquire it within a period fixed by the Development Authority;
- (c) the total area of immovable property, not being land passing into public ownership, which the Development Authority may sell, or the right of ownership of which it may otherwise transfer, shall not exceed 100,000 dunams, but immovable property acquired by any of the bodies mentioned in subparagraph (a) shall not be taken into account for the purposes of this subparagraph;
- (d) the sale, or the transfer of the right of ownership in any other way, of immovable property, being land passing into public ownership or other immovable property, shall be effected by decision of the Government in each individual case;
Prescription Law, 5718-1958http://web.archive.org/web/20091028101659/http://geocities.com/savepalestinenow/israellaws/fulltext/prescriptionlaw.htm
The Prescription Law was first enacted in 1958 and amended in 1965. It repeals critical provisions of, and reverses Britishpractices in relation to, the Ottoman Land Code (1858).
According to COHRE and BADIL (p. 44), the Prescription Law is one of the most critical to understanding the legal underpinnings of Israel’s acquisition of Palestinian lands. Although not readily apparent in the language of the law, the purpose behind this legislation was to enable Israel to claim as ‘State lands’ areas where Palestinians still predominated and where they could still assert their own claims on the land (for example, in the north of the country). The authors claim that this law, in conjunction with the Land (Settlement of Title) Ordinance (Amendment) Law, 5720-1960, the Land (Settlement of Title) Ordinance (New Version), 5729-1969 and the Land Law, 5729-1969, was designed to revise criteria related to the use and registration of Miri lands – one of the most prevalent types in Palestine – and to facilitate Israel’s acquisition of such land.
Under this law, farmers are required to submit documentation proving uninterrupted cultivation of designated plots of land
over a 15-year period (the ‘prescription’ period). Article 5 states:
The period within which a claim in respect of which an action has not been brought shall be prescribed (such period being hereinafter referred to as "the period of prescription") shall be in the case of a claim not relating to land - seven years; in the case of a claim relating to land - fifteen years or, if the land has been registered in the land register after settlement of title in accordance with the Land (Settlement of Title) Ordinance(1), twenty-five years.
The law adds the proviso that lands purchased after 1 March 1943 would be subject to a 20-year verification period. The law also specifies a five-year hiatus between 1958 and 1963 that would not be counted toward this ‘prescription’ period.
According to COHRE and BADIL, by 1963, much of the lands in question had still not been surveyed. Therefore, calculations of the requisite 20-year verification period were in effect halted, and the State was in a position to press its own claims to these lands. The authors consider that the Prescription Law had even more complex ramifications. For example, Israel decided that British aerial photographs of 1945 would be used to verify cultivation. Arab farmers who had not yet begun tilling their lands at the time
the photographs were taken found they were by definition unable to meet the requisite 15-year ‘prescription’ period. Also, as Israel did not accept other evidence of cultivation, such as tax records, many Palestinians fell victim to a ‘Catch-22’: in the process of trying to establish their legal ownership they (retroactively) lost their lands.
According to COHRE and BADIL a 1965 report by the Israeli Land Administration (ILA) reflects on the rationale behind the law:
In the Northern area, there was a danger of the [acquisition of rights] by prescription according to the Statute of
Limitation (1958) regarding all State land, and those [lands] of the Custodian of Absentee Property and the Development Authority. Particularly in the area of the [Arab] minorities where various elements began to take over State land and those of the Development Authority, and [sic] there was worry that these lands would be taken away from the hand of the ILA [Israeli Land Administration] and be transferred to the ownership of the trespassers.
See also
- 1948 Arab-Israeli war1948 Arab-Israeli WarThe 1948 Arab–Israeli War, known to Israelis as the War of Independence or War of Liberation The war commenced after the termination of the British Mandate for Palestine and the creation of an independent Israel at midnight on 14 May 1948 when, following a period of civil war, Arab armies invaded...
- 1948 Palestinian exodus1948 Palestinian exodusThe 1948 Palestinian exodus , also known as the Nakba , occurred when approximately 711,000 to 725,000 Palestinian Arabs left, fled or were expelled from their homes, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the Civil War that preceded it. The exact number of refugees is a matter of dispute...
- List of villages depopulated during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war
- Transfer CommitteeTransfer CommitteeThe Transfer Committee was set up, unofficially, by non-Cabinet members of the first government of Israel in May 1948, with the aim of overseeing the removal of Palestinian Arabs from their towns and villages, and preventing their return...
- Law of Israel
- Basic Laws of IsraelBasic Laws of IsraelThe Basic Laws of Israel are a key component of Israel's constitutional law. These laws deal with the formation and role of the principal state's institutions, and the relations between the state's authorities. Some of them also protect civil rights...
- Palestinian foreign ownership laws
- KhirbaKhirbaKhirba is an Arabic term that refers to a secondary or satellite village on the outskirts of an agricultural village. The khirba was used intermittently during the year, primarily during the plowing or harvest seasons....