Survey of Palestine

[14][16] In 1940 the department no longer had responsibility for adjudicating land settlement claims, and began to focus fully on the survey work.

In Zone "B," which included the Jezreel Valley, eastern Galilee, a parcel of coastal plain south of Haifa, a region northeast of the Gaza District, and the southern part of the Beersheba sub-District, sale of land by a Palestinian Arab was forbidden except to a Palestinian Arab with similar exceptions.

In the "free zone," which consisted of Haifa Bay, the coastal plain from Zikhron Ya'akov to Yibna, and the neighborhood of Jerusalem, there were no restrictions.

The reason given for the regulations was that the Mandatory was required to "ensur[e] that the rights and positions of other sections of the population are not prejudiced," and an assertion that "such transfers of land must be restricted if Arab cultivators are to maintain their existing standard of life and a considerable landless Arab population is not soon to be created"[18] By the 1947–1949 Palestine war, the Survey of Palestine had finalized topographical maps for all of the country except the southern Negev,[19] although it had confirmed land title in less than 20% of the country, specifically in the areas of Jewish settlement.

[20] A cadastral survey was not carried out in the areas which would become the West Bank until after 1948; a situation which caused significant challenges in subsequent years.

There was no survey, recording shape, area or position; the description was usually, to say the least of it, ambiguous, and the extent which was the gauge for taxation, was almost invariably falsified to save the pocket of the owner.

[38] On 1 January 1931 a purpose-built building was opened to house the department at the southern end of a 30-acre (12 ha) plot near the German Templar colony on the outskirts of Tel Aviv (the location can be seen on this 1930 map).