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Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2004 11:27:10 -0500<br>
AL-AWDA-News] Reflections on the Land Day<br>
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On 30 March 2004, Palestinians living in the areas occupied in 1948 held
a general strike and demonstrated against an upsurge of land
confiscations. The demonstrations were peaceful; nevertheless, six
young Palestinians were shot dead by the Israeli army. <br><br>
<br><br>
Ever since, the Land Day was commemorated annually as a symbol of
Palestinian resistance to the combined Imperialist-Zionist project in
Palestine. This project led to the dispossession of the Palestinian
people from their lands, which represented the backbone of the their
agricultural-based economy. Moreover, the project led to the
destruction of the Palestinian society and ethnically cleansed the land
from more than half of its population who became refugees living in
refugee camps under miserable and appalling conditions. <br><br>
<br><br>
In his <i>Der Judenstaat</i>, which was published in 1896, Herzl outlined
the overall framework for the creation of a Jewish State. The First
Zionist Congress, which was held in 1897, adopted the strategy proposed
in <i>Der Judenstaat</i>. This strategy called for "Land
Redemption" and "Transfer" and was implemented under the
leadership of a number of Zionist leaders that included, among others,
Weizmann, Ben-Gurion, Begin, Rabin and Sharon.<br><br>
<br><br>
"Land Redemption" meant dispossessing the Palestinians from
their land and "Transfer" meant ethnic cleansing of the land
from its indigenous population. The whole project, however, could
never had been possible without a partnership agreement with the Western
Imperialist powers for the mutual benefit of both parties. This
partnership was reflected in the Balfour Declaration issued by
"Great" Britain on November 2, 1917 promising support for a
"Jewish National Home in Palestine". <br><br>
<br><br>
The Zionist Organization established two central agencies for the purpose
of land acquisition: the Jewish National Fund (JNF), which was founded in
1901, and the Palestine Land Development Company (PLDC), which was
founded in 1908 to purchase land for the JNF. An overseas
fundraising mechanism, known as <i>Keren Hayesod, </i>was also
established. The PLDC efforts were cardinal in the founding of Tel
Aviv and the purchase of lands in Haifa and Jerusalem, where Jewish
neighborhoods were established. <br><br>
<br><br>
Following the entry of the allied forces into Jerusalem on 9 December
1917 led by General Allenby, a British military administration was
established in Palestine. Constrained by the rules of war, the
military administration had to maintain the status quo in Palestine and
accordingly closed the Land Registry Offices in November 1918.
Among the first actions of the British civil administration in 1920 was a
new Land Transfer Ordinance in September. The effect of this law
was to facilitate the purchase of land by the Jews. The Land
Registry Offices were reopened in October, permitting transfer of
ownership. A new system of land titles was introduced to make it
easier, faster, and less costly for the Zionists to acquire land.
The Land Transfer Ordinance ostensibly intended to protect
tenant-cultivators from eviction by landlords. It had in fact the
opposite effect mainly because absentee landlords owned most of the large
tracts of land. Whereas relations between landowner and tenant had,
until then, had been relatively good, the new law gave the tenant the
impression (encouraged by Zionist land brokers) that he no longer needed
to pay the rent, since the law gave him certain "tenancy
rights" under ambiguously worded provisions. The landowner,
placed in the unenviable position of owning land but realizing little
return from it, and burdened with taxation, was pushed into a difficult
situation. The Zionist land-broker would then step in, offer to buy
the land and rid the landowner of his troubles. The Land Transfer
Ordinance was later judged to have been a contributory cause of the May
1921 riots. (Sami Hadawi, <i>Zionism and the Land of Palestine</i>,
pp. 5-6. <i>Zionism and the Lands of Palestine</i> was a paper prepared
and delivered as a speech in an International Symposium on "Zionism
and Racism" convened in Tripoli, Libya, during the period 24 – 28
July 1976. The speeches were edited by Walter Lehn and published in
book form.)<br><br>
<br><br>
As leadership of the imperialist powers shifted from Britain to the U.S.
during WWII, a national conference of American Zionists was held at the
Biltmore Hotel in New York under the leadership of Nahum Goldmann and
Meyer Weisgal from 9 to 11 May 1942. Ben-Gurion used the conference
as platform to present his political program, which was reflected in the
resolutions adopted by the conference. These resolutions laid down
the Zionist demands after victory in the war against Germany, which
included the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine. Ben-Gurion
had no doubt that the Biltmore Program would "replace the one
adopted in Basle…and would, after the war, become the objective of the
Jewish people". (The complete text of the Biltmore Program was
reproduced in Walid Khalidi, <i>From Heavens to Conquest</i>, pp.
495-497. See also Michael Bar-Zohar, pp. 107-108) <br><br>
<br><br>
When the British Mandate expired in 1948, the country had 277 Jewish
rural settlements (15 villages, 99 moshavim, 159 kibbutzim, and 4
others). Their 111,000 inhabitants accounted for nearly 20% of the
Jewish population. (Centenary of Zionism, 1897 - 1997, "<i>The
Redeemers of the Land</i>")<br><br>
<br><br>
The total land acquired by the Jews in Palestine by 1948 was less than 2
million donums (no more than 8% of the total land of Palestine).
After the creation of the Jewish State in 1948, Israel began systematic
plunder of Palestinian land in different ways. The "Absentees
Property Law" of 1950, the "Land Requisition Law" of 1953,
the "Defence Emergency Regulations" passed by the British in
1945, and the "Emergency Regulations" introduced by Israel in
1949 were all used to expropriate Palestinian Arab lands. <br><br>
<br><br>
The Absentees Property Law stated that any body that was not present
directly before, during or after the war of 1948 was defined as an
absentee and his/her land as surrendered. Thus it was
confiscated. The Land Requisition Law "legalized" the
stealing of Arab lands. By such measures, Palestinian Arabs were
"legally" deprived of their lands and those displaced have been
prevented from returning. <br><br>
<br><br>
A study issued in April 1949 by the Knesset's Finance Committee admitted
that the presence of so much Arab property put "the fighting and
victorious community before serious material temptation". Not
only were thousands of landholdings seized and occupied but thousands
more orchards and vineyards were either uprooted or neglected irreparably
by Israelis who wished to use the land for Jewish settlement. The
land of all Palestinian refugees was subject to confiscation, as well as
the property of 30,000 Israeli Arabs who were classified as
"internal present-absentees". Many of these people had
fled only a short distance from their homes or had been absent for only a
few days. Even though they had never left Palestinian territory and
were considered citizens of Israel, their land was subject to
confiscation. Many other "Israeli Arabs" lost their land
because they could not prove their ownership. Numerous records had
been destroyed in the chaos of war and the transition from British to
Israeli administration. There were many cases where Arab residents
of Israel lost property that had been in their family for
generations. <br><br>
<br><br>
The Arab Knesset members asserted that the government had no right to
seize the property of legal residents of the country who carried Israeli
identity cards. Even Israeli High Court of Justice ruled in several
cases that the government lacked the slightest pretext to seize property
of many Arabs. Eventually the government offered monetary
compensation for the land of Israeli Arabs but it amounted to a tiny
fraction of its real value. Most Israeli Arabs refused to accept
the insulting pittance.<br><br>
<br><br>
Much larger in extent, however, were the lands of the over 750,000
Palestinian "refugees" who were expelled from the
country. Since the Israeli government had no intention of ever
allowing any substantial repatriation of the refugees, much of this land
was soon given outright to those who had occupied it during the
war. Other portions were given to many of the thousands of Jewish
immigrants who were flooding the country. Indeed by 1953, about a
third of Israelis lived on property stolen from the Palestinians.
(Michael Palumbo, <i>The Palestinian Catastrophe</i>: <i>The 1948
Expulsion of a People from their Homeland. </i>London/Boston: 1987,
pp. 195 - 198)<br><br>
<br><br>
An <i>Agricultural Settlement Law</i> was passed in Israel in 1967, which
included restrictions on the use of agricultural land and of water.
The intent of this law was to prevent any non-Jew from leasing or holding
any rights in national lands, including those owned by the JNF.
This law and similar restrictive and discriminatory policies adopted by
the state from the JNF apply to over 90% of the lands in pre-1967
Israel.<br><br>
<br><br>
Following the 1967 war, Israel applied the same laws which were used in
1948 - Absentees Property Law, Land Requisition Law, and Emergency
Regulations - to "confiscate" Palestinian Arab lands in the
newly conquered territories, the West Bank and Gaza. <br><br>
<br><br>
This systematic and continuous plunder of Palestinian lands was
intolerable and led to the Land Day, which is being commemorated
today.<br><br>
<br><br>
Nizar Sakhnini, 30 March 2004<br><br>
<br>
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