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.
The reasons behind the law were twofold: (1) to increase tax revenue, and (2) to enable the government exercise greater state control over the area.
[11][12] 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.
[11][12] 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 Nations in 1922, which remained in effect until the establishment of Israel in 1948.
As summarized by the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry 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 the remainder of Palestine, consisting of about five percent of the country-which, however, includes the most fertile areas- land sales remained unrestricted.
[20] The Law and Administration Ordinance, 5708-1948 at the Wayback Machine (archived October 28, 2009) defined the competences and composition of the Provisional Government.
[21] After the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, 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"[22] Article 3 of the law made it retroactive and effective from 15 May 1948, the day after the declaration of the establishment of the State of Israel.
[24] 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.
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.
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.
Specific laws in this category include: As a result, two million dunams were confiscated and given to the Israeli Custodian, who later transferred the land to the development authority.
[27] According to Simha Flapan,[28] "a detailed account of exactly how abandoned Arab property assisted in the absorption of the new immigrants was prepared by Joseph Schechtman": 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"[32] 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).
According to COHRE and BADIL (p. 42), the Government of Israel did not automatically gain title to lands seized under the Absentees’ Property Law.
(b) This section shall have effect retroactively as from the date of the coming into force of the principal Law.According to Meron 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.
[35] 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 domain).
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.
Article 3(4)(a) reads:The Development Authority is competent: Archived October 28, 2009, at the Wayback Machine The Prescription Law was first enacted in 1958 and amended in 1965.
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.
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.
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.