Talk:Declarations of State Land in the West Bank
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Topic[edit]
This article is about the history and current practices of Israel in regard to declaring land in the West Bank as "state land".
Sources[edit]
This article basically says that the British invented the prevailing interpretation of State Land. |
Also see: Gerber, Haim (1987). The Social Origins of the Modern Middle East. Lynne Rienner Publishers. ISBN 978-1-55587-509-1. State land, in the modern sense, is land that the state wishes to keep out of indi- vidual use, such as forest land. Such a legal category did not exist in the Ottoman Empire and came into being only in the new states. Miri land was not state land in this sense. There was never really a question of usurpation of such land; at the most it could be misused."
Onceinawhile (talk) 21:27, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
Another interesting snipped from Gerber: "All in all, then, the lists of important landlords support my theory that large landlordism was a novel phenomenon in the Middle East, which came into being only, or mainly, In the wake of the 1858 land law, and that the major avenue for creating the large estates was to purchase formerly unoccupied lands from the government. The latter was apparently more true in Palestine than in Syria, as we see shortly. If we seek additional proof to support this thesis, it an be found even within the annals of the two national movements that had struggled for Palestine. It is not by chance that the pre-1967 map of the country showed that the Palestinians occupied the hilly regions of the West Bank and constituted a majority in the Galilee. In contrast, the Jews predominated throughout the plains. The reason for this was embedded in the pattern of agrarian relations that came into being in the wake of the 1858 land law. The land purchasers on behalf of the Zionist movement would not and could not purchase land on a massive scale in the hilly regions where small peasant landlordism prevailed. But in the plains the Zionist land purchasers encountered an agrarian situation that for their purposes was most propitious. Vast expanses of land were newly purchased, in the main by the urban rich, who bought them expressly to earn an easy profit. Hence, they were quite ready to sell the land for a good price and did so at the stroke of the pen. Small wonder that the Zionist land purchasers concentrated most of their efforts on this part of the country and that consequently the hilly country remained in the hands of the Palestinians."
Onceinawhile (talk) 21:37, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
An explanation[edit]
See this youtube presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F7jyMgeiZU
Perhaps not the most impressive production, but interesting to hear it explained.
Onceinawhile (talk) 19:53, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
Query[edit]
@Onceinawhile: Can't seem to easily find the answer to my question. If I was a potential settler in the WB, and I want to have a house in one of the settlements, who do I buy it from? Am I buying the freehold? Or is it some sort of leasehold? Selfstudier (talk) 13:34, 12 June 2020 (UTC)
- Selfstudier, I have not been able to figure this out yet. Interesting question - I have been thinking of buying a holiday home :-) Onceinawhile (talk) 08:32, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
Legal background not explained[edit]
Writing that it's "complex" and nothing else means nothing. We need an explanation. All else depends on it. For instance: why is Turkey's present to the Palestinians in giving them the Ottoman cadaster such a weapon against Israeli land confiscation? If Israel confiscates at will, why are the Ottoman cadaster, the lack of Mandate-period registration, and the fact that by 67 only 1/3 of WB lands were registered, of any importance at all? And so forth. A legal weapon cannot be dealt with anecdotically (look what happened in place X or Y), as it's done here. No background, no article. Arminden (talk) 14:50, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
I found much more about Israeli legal tricks at Israeli settlements#Land ownership. It's more general, but helpful. Should be linked, expanded on here. The legal ways of combating it should be presented as such, not via examples. It's key to the annexation project and deserves more basic info and detail.