Settling historical land claims in the wake of Arab-Israeli peace

Journal of Palestine Studies

Volumn 27, Issue 1, 1997, Pages 38-50

  Fischbach, Michael R ^a  

^a RANDOLPH MACON COLLEGE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0006663834     PISSN: 0377919X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2537808     Document Type: Article

References (52)

1. Safari Jiryis, "The Legal Structure for the Expropriation and Absorption of Arab Lands in Israel," JPS 2, no. 4 (Summer 1973), p. 83.
2. Much of Jiryis's material is derived from his earlier book The Arabs in Israel, trans. Inea Bushnaq (New York and London: Monthly Review Press, 1976).
3. Jiryis, "The Legal Structure," p. 89.
4. Usama Halabi, "The Impact of the Jewishness of the State of Israel on the Status and Rights of the Arab Citizens in Israel," in The Palestinians in Israel: Is Israel the State of all its Citizens and "Absentees"?, trans. and ed. Nur Masalha (Nazareth and London: Galilee Center for Social Research and Scholarship Fund for Publications on Israel, 1993), p. 20.
5. Sami Hadawi, Palestinian Rights and Losses in 1948: A Comprehensive Study (London: Saqi Books, 1988), p. 94. Hadawi was the UNCCP's land specialist from 1952 to 1956.
6. Hadawi, Palestinian Rights and Losses, p. 95. Hadawi claims that the UNCCP failed to consider grazing land and other forms of land owned by villages collectively in its total, thus reducing the "true" scope of Palestinian losses considerably.
7. Joseph Weitz, "Land Ownership," in Israel Pocket Library: Immigration and Settlement (Jerusalem: Keter Books, 1973), p. 108.
8. Jiryis, "The Legal Structure," p. 89.
9. Jordan possesses numerous Palestinian land records. It obtained microfilmed copies of UNCCP documents from the UNCCP in 1974. It also possesses microfilmed copies of British land registers. In the spring of 1948, prior to the British withdrawal, the British gave a copy of these microfilmed registers to one Jewish and one Palestinian employee of the Mandate land department. Jordan also maintains several hundred original British and Ottoman land registers from all regions of pre-1948 Palestine which came into its hands as a result of the 1948 fighting. Lastly, Jordanian authorities produced their own land records (relating to the West Bank only) from 1948 to 1967.
10. The Arabic word taswiyat al-aradi refers to the settlement of land claims.
11. For details on the land settlement campaign, see Michael R. Fischbach, "The Implications of Jordanian Land Policy for the West Bank," Middle East Journal 48, no. 3 (Summer 1994), pp. 492-509.
12. Interview with Shawqi Issa, a lawyer specializing in land affairs, Bethlehem, 13 August 1996.
13. Tabu is a Turkish word used in reference to land title that has passed into modern usage both among Palestinians and Israelis.
14. Copies of all land records drawn up by the Jordanians in the West Bank until June 1967 were kept in Amman for safekeeping. Since access to these was restricted from 1967 until 1995 to prevent possible sales to Israelis, they are presumably free from tampering and forgeries.
15. In December 1996, the government reiterated its refusal to issue documents or even to allow notaries public to issue wikala dawriyya documents relating to land under the control of the PA. See the articles in two Jordanian newspapers: al-Ra'i, 15 December 1996,
16. and Jordan Times, 16 December 1996.
17. Jerusalem Post International Edition, 17 May 1997.
18. Avi Shlaim, Collusion Across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), p. 578.
19. The Jordanian Department of Lands and Survey dispatched a team to carry out a special rapid survey to determine how much land had been taken. Jordanian Department of Lands and Survey, Annual Report 1950, p 1.
20. Jordan Times, 13 August 1994.
21. For details, see Abla Amawi, "State and Class in Transjordan: A Study of State Autonomy" (Ph.D. diss., Georgetown University, 1992), 289 ff.
22. For a short discussion of the Guardian of Enemy Property's holdings on the West Bank, see Fischbach, "The Implications of Jordanian Land Policy," pp. 504-5. After Israel's occupation of the West Bank in 1967, the Israeli government did not return the Jewish land that had been held by the guardian to its owners, but retained it.
23. See the statement of Munther Haddadin in Jordan Times, 27 June 1994.
24. See the treaty in Shlaim, Collusion Across the Jordan, pp. 635-39.
25. On 13 March 1997, a tragedy occurred when a Jordanian soldier opened fire on a group of Israeli schoolgirls touring the island, killing seven and wounding six.
26. According to Kamil Nasrawi, a member of the committee. Interview with Kamil Nasrawi, Amman, 18 August 1996.
27. JPS 25, no. 4 (Summer 1996), p. 119.
28. Jordan Times (Intemet edition), 26 February and 5 March 1997. Http:// www.accessme.corn/JordanTimes/ newsl.htm.
29. Meron Benvenisti, The West Bank Data Project: A Survey of Israel's Policies (Washington and London: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1984), p. 30.
30. Jewish National Fund, "Report to the Thirteenth Congress," p. 68, in The Jewish National Fund, Walter Lehn (London and New York: Kegan Paul International, 1988), p. 73. Lehn claims that some of this land lay near Suwaylih, and that the Jordanians placed such Jewish-owned land under the Guardian of Enemy Property. Interview with Walter Lehn, Toronto, 2 March 1996.
31. For details on the specifics of the purchase of the Bani Sakhr land, including names of the sellers, see Zvi Ilan, "Nisyonot li-Rekhishat Adamah ule-Hityashvut Yehudit be-'Ever ha-Yarden ha-Mizrahi, 1871-1947" [Attempts by Jews to purchase lands and settle down in Transjordan, 1871-1947] (Ph.D. diss., Bar-Ilan University, 1981), pp. 407-8. For details on the purchase of land near Madaba, see pp. 410-11. The author is unaware of what became of these two large tracts of Jewish-owned land during the Mandate. The Bani Sakhr land in question appears to have been located in or near what became the village of Zuwayza. However, Transjordanian land records from the late 1930s offer no indication of Jewish ownership there. It is unclear if the land was resold, registered in the names of Arabs, or if some other arrangement was made.
32. Rumors of Transjordanian land being purchased by Arabs using Zionist funds were well-known to British authorities during the Mandate. The British resident in Transjordan, C.H.F. Cox, told High Commissioner for Palestine and Transjordan Sir Arthur Wauchope in 1933 that 'Abdullah had claimed that several very prominent figures from al-Karak, al-Salt, Kufranja, the Bani Sakhr bedouin, and the Circassian community were negotiating to sell land to Zionist interests. The names are mentioned in the British Colonial Office records CO 831/21/2, Cox to high commissioner, 18 January 1933; enclosure no. 1 to despatch of 27 January 1933. A map of the Transjordan was marked by a British military officer about this same time to indicate areas "reported to have been offered for sale to Jewish groups." These include large areas near Kufranja, Jarash, and other locales. See the map in CO 831/22/10. Zionist officials also claimed to have been approached and offered land by such figures. See CO 831/21/3, high commissioner's interview with Chaim Arlosoroff, Emmanuel Neumann, and Nahum Sokoloff [Sokolow], 2 February 1933. Paul Knabenshue, U.S. consul-general in Jerusalem during the 1930s, also knew of such sales. See Kenneth W. Stein, The Land Question in Palestine, 1917-1939 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), p. 197.
33. See al-Dustur (Internet edition), 22 May 1997, http://www.arabia.com/Addustour/tnu/F2html;
34. and Jordan Times (Internet edtion), 24 May 1997, at http:// www.accessme.com/JordanTimes/Saturday/home3.htm.
35. Jordanian Department of Lands and Survey, records of the diwan; file 6/ 3/jim, "Aradi al-Sultan 'Abd al-Hamid" [Lands of Sultan 'Abd al-Hamid]; G.F. Walpole's memo of 20 October 1936.
36. Department of Lands and Survey, settlement files; Ghawr al-Safi files; "Jadwal al-Iddi'a'at" [Schedule of claims],
37. "Ghawr al-Safi, al-Taqarir" [Ghawr al-Safi, reports],
38. "Qadiya [Case] 365/10." In 1952, the land was registered to the Jordanian government although the land's status at the time of the lease is unclear.
39. Amnesty International, "Jordan: Executions on the Increase," 16 May 1994.
40. Jesaias Press, "Die jüdischen Kolonian Palästinas," Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins 35 (1912), pp. 181, 185.
41. Also, see the map in Eliahu Epstein [Elath], "Notes from a Paper on the Present Conditions in the Hauran," Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society 23 (1936), p. 596.
42. Ilan, "Nisyonot li-Rekhishat," iii.
43. Epstein, "Notes from a Paper," p. 599. The areas were still under Jewish ownership as of at least the mid-1930s.
44. Press, "Die jüdischen Kolonian Palästinas," pp. 180-81.
45. Ilan's "Nisyonot li-Rekhishat" discusses Bnei Yehuda at length in several places.
46. "The Otherwise Man" [George E. Doolittle], Forbidden Paths in the Land of Og: A Record of the Travels of Three Wise and Otherwise Men to the East of the River (New York, Chicago, and Toronto: Fleming H. Revell, 1900), p. 73.
47. Jewish National Fund, "Report to the Thirteenth Congress," p. 68, in Lehn The Jewish National Fund, p. 73.
48. See Ilan "Nisyonot li-Rekhishat" for details on Jewish land and settlement in Syria.
49. Off-the-record discussion with an official associated with the Israeli embassy in Washington, 9 September 1996. On the basis of his talks with an official of the JNF, the official claimed that Israel possesses maps indicating the scope of Zionist-owned land in Syria.
50. Yedi'ot Aharonot, 3 December 1996.
51. Translation cited in Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories 7, no. 1 (January-February 1997), p. 4.
52. See also Jerusalem Post (Internet edition), 16 December 1996, at http:// www.jpost.com/archive/16.Dec.1996/ News/Article-l.html.