Nawaf Al-Zarou

• Establishments for the Capture of the Land

• Before the Establishment of Israel

• Table (1). Ownership of the land throughout Palestine in 1945 (16) (Percentage)

• After the Establishment of Israel

• Table (2). The Distribution of the Land (in dunums [1 dunum = 1,000 square meters])

• The West Bank

• The Green Light

• Some Methods

• End Notes

According to what has already been mentioned concerning the terrorist ideology in the eyes of the Zionists, namely its prelude, starting point, psychology, program and the continual horrendous practices, including massacres and genocide, the most significant questions that come to mind are: Why? What is the purpose? And is there an end?

When reading Zionist Israeli literature, the political ideology of Zionism and the practical policies of the successive governments throughout the last five decades, we can see that the land has always been at the core of the struggle. All the Zionist organizations have been prepared and armed to capture the land to establish the Zionist State. When the wise men of Zion decided to gather the Jews from all over the world into a pure Jewish State, they did not have the constituents of a State except in a theoretical sense. They did not even have a piece of land, which is very essential to establishing any State through immigration and settlement. Consequently, several wars took place, as well as immigration, deportation, settlement and the Arab-Israeli demographic conflict. These executive Zionist procedures relied on certain statements documented during the Zionist conferences (1). For example, "The land should be possessed by the Jews forever and registered on behalf of the Jewish national capital fund as non-transferable property" (2). In his speech to the executive Zionist committee in 1937, Osteshken said, "We are not looking for agriculture but for the largest piece of land so we can appropriate the remote areas where the land is of a better quality despite all the hardships" (3). Moreover, Re'nan Vites, the Chief of the Settlements in the Zionist Agency, said, "The designers of the Zionist settlement for the past 60 years have emphasized the fact that the borders of the Jewish State to come should be decided through settlements and colonies (4)." Hertzl, the Father of Zionism, said, "Since the Zionist movement was founded as a political movement, it was decided that the maximum area of land should be confiscated to establish the great Jewish State" (5). Thus, the general policy of all Zionist leaders has been to capture the Arab land through the various organizations, including the National Jewish Fund (established in 1903) and the Fundamental Fund (established in 1920).

These organizations were able to capture a lot of land in Palestine through various means, but a fierce long-term conflict with the Palestinians resulted. The policies of the Zionists have never changed even after Israel was established; on the contrary, they have renewed these policies in order to capture even more land. This has remained the state of affairs and will be the reality for a long time, as we can see from the beliefs expounded by Osteshken in 1904, "In order to establish an independent Jewish community, or to be more accurate the Jewish State, all over Palestine or at least on most of it, the land must become the property of the Jewish nation regardless of the number of the Jews in the cities and villages." This can be achieved only through the use of force, such as by the occupation of the land by the military forces, or through the confiscation of the land by devious methods, much of which was supported by the British authorities.
Data: Zionism has faced three main strategic problems-the land, immigration and security-since the idea of establishing a Jewish national State in Palestine was first introduced.

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Establishments for the Capture of the Land
All the Zionist conferences held before Israel was established have emphasized the land as an essential constituent for settlement in order to cope with the vast numbers of immigrant Jews entering Palestine from all over the world. The reason for such a large inflow of immigrants to Palestine is due to the Zionists' objective to achieve demographical supremacy, which necessitates the Jews becoming a majority of the population and the owners of most of the land. In order to achieve this goal, several financial and executive establishments were founded, namely: the Jewish Assurance Fund or Settlement in 1902; the National Israeli Fund (Alkern Kimmith), which was established according to the resolutions of the Zionist Conference in 1901 and the proposals of which aimed to capture as much land as possible; the British-Palestinian Bank in 1902; the Palestine Land Development Company in 1907; the Palestine Bureau in 1908; the Fundamental Fund (Kern Hesoud) in 1921; and the Beka Organization established by Baron Rothschild in 1925 (7). It is worth mentioning that the plans and activities of these organizations were directed by the Zionists under various nominations and titles.

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Before the Establishment of Israel
All historical sources show that the Jews did not own any piece of land before 1855 except in Jerusalem, Hebron, Safad and Tiberias. Sir Moshe' Montefiory bought the first piece of land-a 100-dunum orange orchard in Jaffa in 1855. He then went on to buy other estates at Moza (near Jerusalem) in 1859, at Mlebas (Btah Tekfa) in 1878, at E'youn Qara (Rishon Lezion), Zamarine (Zakhroun Yacoub), and in Al-Ja'ouneh (Rosh Beina) in 1882. By the end of 1882, approximately 22,000 dunums were owned by Jews. By the First World War, this increased to 418,000 dunums (8). During the British Mandate in Palestine, "the British authorities played an important role in transfering ownership of the land to the Jews" (9)-approximately 500,000 dunums were owned by various Jewish organizations, 200,000 dunums were given free, and the Jews were able to purchase 625,000 dunums from non-Palestinian Arabs, which can be divided as follows: 400,000 in Marj Ben Amr, including 22 villages whose inhabitants (900 families) were forced to leave; 165,000 dunums in Al-Holeh; and 28,000 dunums in Al-Nasereh, Safad, Akka, Bisan, Jenin and Tulkarm (10). In addition, the Zionist movement was able to capture a further 300,000 dunums through various means, thus the total area owned by the Jews was 1,425,000 dunums, although Yousuf Vites states that it was closer to 1,800,000 dunums, of which 800,000 dunums were owned by the National Fund, 450,000 by the Beka Society and 570,000 by other companies and organizations (12). Other sources show that the Jews possessed 2,100,000 dunums in the 30 years before May 1948 when the British Mandate ended, which was about 8% of the land (13). This resulted in the chain reaction of the deportation of 2,746 families from 22 villages in Marj Ben Amer, 15,500 people from Wadi Al-Wareth, 25,000 from the Al-Holeh Plains, and thousands from other areas including Al-Sakhneh, Bisan, Tab'on, Al-Zbeidat, Al-Mansy and others (14). Concerning the Jewish settlements that had been built by the various organizations, they numbered 47 in 1914 and had reached 259 by 1944, which is an average of seven new settlements annually during a 30-year period (15).

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Table (1). Ownership of the land throughout Palestine in 1945 (16) (Percentage)

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After the Establishment of Israel
The International Zionist movement continued with its cooperation with the Western Imperial States to encourage the member States of the United Nations to divide Palestine into an Arab State and a Jewish State. Thus, on 29 November 1947, the UN adopted a resolution to divide Palestine into three parts. The first part comprised 56% and was to be where the Jewish State would be established; the second part comprised 42% where the Arab State would be established; and the third comprised 2%, which was to become "the international zone of Jerusalem and its vicinity" (17). With support from the British forces, the Jews were able to increase their share of the land to 79% (22,290,000 dunums where the State of Israel was established, 425,000 dunums of this total incorporated marine areas). This area was divided as follows: 17,675,000 dunums was allocated for public land, 800,000 was owned by the National Fund, 450,000 by the Beka Organization, 820,000 by various individuals and societies, and 3,175,000 was the land previously owned by the Arabs who had been deported in 1947 and 1948 (18).

After occupying this vast area, which is about four-fifths of the total area of Palestine, the Israeli forces went on to occupy the land of the absentees who were forced to leave, while thousands of new Jewish immigrants were housed in 370 settlements which had been established between 1935-1948. Of these settlements 350 of them were established on land owned by the Arabs. By 1954 it was estimated that one quarter of the houses in occupied Palestine belonged to the Arabs who had been deported (19).

In addition to the organizations that had been working prior to the establishment of Israel, the successive Israeli Governments formed various departments, which worked to capture even more land belonging to the Palestinians. Despite the resistance to this occupation, several laws were passed and an Israeli Land Council was established to supervise the land. Furthermore, the Agricultural Planning Department was formed in 1950 alongside the settlement section of the Zionist organization, the Authority of Agriculture, Settlement, and Rural Planning and Development in 1967, and the Authority of Rural Buildings in the Ministry of Housing. The joint board of the Israeli Government and the Zionist organization was formed in late June 1967 (20), in addition to other executive and planning organizations for settlement and land confiscation. The most remarkable law devised by the Israeli forces was the law of the Estates of the Absentees and Land Appropriation of 1950, 1953 and 1957 (21). The law of the Present Absentee, a law unique to Israel, which allows Israel to confiscate the land of those who sought shelter from the war outside their homes, even for only a few hours, these people are not allowed to return to their estates, even though they moved only as far as the neighbouring village (22). Finally, the law of Land Collection was legislated.

In order to make these procedures legal, Israel passed the law of Land Appropriation (compensation) in 1954, according to which Israel agreed to give compensation to the Arabs for the loss of their lands which covered an area between 300,000-1,000,000 dunums (23). Moreover, Israel confiscated the public land arguing that it belonged to the State not a group of individuals (24); as a result, the land given to the Palestinians decreased greatly, the agricultural units were damaged, with the area of these units going down to a mere 3 dunums by 1967 instead of the 25 dunums they had covered under the British Mandate. The remaining villages became little more than barracks for the Arabs who worked for the Jews to sleep in, and these villages were deprived of any opportunity for farming or industrial development (26). The Israeli forces have been continuing with this policy to capture the remaining land and depriving the Palestinians from what is left. The following table shows the development of the farming land and the distribution of this land between the Arabs and the Jews between 1950 and July 1966, evidence of the extremely serious dimensions of this policy (27).

Israel has also confiscated 2,250 dunums in Al-Nasereh, 5,100 in Al-Be'neh, Deir Al-Asad, Nahf (the battle of Al-Shaghor) in 1939, and 3,555 from 25 villages in Galilee. Consequently, Israel possesses 16,900,000 dunums out of the total area of 20,300,000, which is 85% of the total area of Palestine (28).

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Table (2). The Distribution of the Land (in dunums [1 dunum = 1,000 square metres])

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The West Bank
As an extension to this expansionist Zionist policy against the Arab lands, the Israeli forces have continued their hostile methods to capture the lands of the West Bank and Gaza using various ways and means, including forgery and confiscation, under the pretexts of security or the need for more settlements. They have also appropriated the estates of the absentees using the Decree Number 50, which was issued after the war in 1967 by the supreme headquarters of the army (29). The Israeli engineer and estate dealer, Ya'azi Rozon, said that the Israeli officials have given a lot of assistance to the settlement projects, which require the capture of more land in order to achieve the ultimate goal of the Likud party, which is to realize "the great land of Israel" (30). These estate brokers use all kinds of criminal activities, including forgery, bribery and supporting the extremist parties in the elections held in May 1984. Investigations into the activities of these brokers has revealed the following:

1. Certain brokers knew the land very well and were on good terms with the original owners of the land, who used to go with them to view the land and give them a detailed idea of the lands potential.
2. It was necessary to obtain a land registration document from the Department of Finance, which is quite different from the land scheme ownership document, which shows the details of the land.
3. It was a condition that the brokers would get 10% of the total price of the land.
4. Because the land scheme ownership documents were not enclosed, there were a lot of cases of forgery and misdeeds concerning the relevant estates, which often forced the owners to leave their land.

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The Green Light
The leaders of these forged deals were Yegal Aloan and Moshe' Dayyan, who established the first settlement in the West Bank at Bani Na'eem, near Hebron, in April 1968. This was accepted by the Congressional Party, Hame'erakh, as an initiative, and the green light was given to start the process of land confiscation after the war in 1967.

Some Methods
The term of office held by the Likud Party has witnessed the unprecedented establishment of settlements and land confiscation through all manner of criminal acts. For example:

1. Death threats were often used to force villagers to sign documents that were later revealed to be forged land deals, as in the case of Bedia.
2. The land brokers used modern methods of forgery, for example in obtaining the desired signature through the use of photomontage.
3. Deceiving the mentally or physically handicapped, for example an Israeli lawyer employed a deaf worker, he then asked him to sign a paper as a notice of the receipt of the salary, the lawyer then used this signature to make forgeries.
4. Forging the fingerprints.
5. The forgery of the identity cards, which was often facilitated through the payment of large sums of money.
6. The forgery of the general proxy documents.
7. Taking some landlords to the military courts and forcing them to sign purchase documents for certain Jewish brokers and corporations.
These are just some of the methods used during the Israeli settlement fever to capture the land and establish the Jewish settlements, during which Israel was able to capture 65% of the West Bank and Gaza and thus establish between 150-180 more settlements (32). This has been continued doggedly by Netanyahu's rightist Government, which has increased the ferocity of the Arab-Israeli conflict to levels not seen for more than 50 years. Furthermore, Netanyahu's Government has explicitly rejected any proposal to withdraw from any of the appropriated land, especially from the West Bank.

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End Notes

1. The Lectures of the First Zionist Conference, Jerusalem, Ro'ein Mass, 1946, pp. 1942-1944.
2. Emil Toma, The Roots of the Palestinian Cause, pp. 180-181.
3. Bill Committee Report, 1937, The Black Book about the Day of the Land, 20 March 1976. The Statement of the Regional Committee to Defend the Arab Land in Israel, Haifa, 1986, p. 14.
4. The Jerusalem Post, an Israeli newspaper, 12 September 1977.
5. See The Zionist Ideology and the Establishment of Israel, Dar Al-Jalil, Amman, 1986.
6. Bill Committee Report, Ibid.
7. Epshaloum Rokah, The Law of Settlement in Israel, 1978, p. 62.
8. Yousuf Vites, Land Ownership, Immigration and Settlement, Jerusalem, 1973, pp. 103-108.
9. Dr. Edward Sa'id, The Problem of the Arab Refugees, Cairo, 1963, p. 38.
10. Mr. Omar Abu Al-Naser, Jihad Philesteen Al-Arabia, 1936, Jaffa, p. 13.
11. Dr. Edward Sa'id, Ibid., p. 40.
12. Land Ownership, Ibid., p. 106.
13. Dr. Hasan A. Saleh, Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Mr. Ibraheem Abu Laghd, Judaization of Palestine, Beirut, 1972; Mustafa Al-Dabbagh, Beladna Philesteen, ch.1, sec.1, p. 173, and Dr. Hasan A. Saleh, Ibid.
16. As shown in the Rural Statistics, prepared by the British Adminstration in Palestine in 1945.
17. Dr.Hasan A. Saleh, Ibid.
18. Yousuf Vites, The Estates of Absentees, January 1953, Ha'aretz and the Jerusalem Post, Israeli newspapers, 18 January 1953.
19. Mr.Abderrahman Abu Arafeh, Settlement is the Real Application of Zionism, p. 138.
20. Dr. Hasan A. Saleh, Ibid.
21. Dr. Shareef Kana'neh, The Social Change and Psychological Symmetry of the Arabs of Israel, Beir Zeit University, 1978, p. 114.
22. Don Berts, Facts about Israel, Israeli Information Centre, New York, 1957, p. 46.
23. The Black Book about the Day of the Land, Ibid.
24. Ibid.
25. Mr. Adnan Al-Amery, The Agricultural and Industrial Development in Palestine 1900-1970, Jerusalem, 1981, p. 25.
26. The Confiscation of the Arab Land 1948-1976, Al-Itehad newspaper, Haifa, 31 March 1987.
27. Ibid.
28. The Confiscation of the Arab Land, Ibid.
29. Mr. Abderahman Abu Arafeh, Ibid.
30. Yedi'out Ahrenout, an Israli newspaper, 13 December 1985.
31. See the archives of the Information Centre at the Jerusalem Day Committee.
32. Ibid.