The Dispossession of the Peasantry (ص 157)
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- The Dispossession of the Peasantry (ص 157)
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141
spite of the crucial impetus these two factors provided, total European Jewish
acquisition of land amounted to less than 7 percent of the total land area of
Palestine (see Table 3.5).
In addition to the 1,734,000 dunums acquired by purchase, there were
195,000 dunums acquired by concessions or long-term lease from the government
on lands the latter claimed to be state domain.” These lands constituted about 20
percent of the acquisitions of land by European Jewish settlers during the Mandate.
The long-term leases included lands claimed by the government but whose title was
still unsettled.
The relatively minuscule figure of 7 percent (or, stating it differently: why
have the European settlers been unable to acquire more land?), can be better
understood in the context of two features of Palestine at the time. First, unlike
some other, but not ail European settler movements where land was acquired
through outright expropriation carried out by the colonial state apparatus, the
Zionist settlers did not have political control (state apparatus) over Palestine. This
meant that the settlers had to acquire land primarily through purchase. The
expropriation of the bulk of the land was effected after the creation of Israel (i.e.,
after control of the state).
Second, the limits to purchasing more land reflected, besides the collective
musha’a (although it was in the process of dissolution), the small landholding
Survey I, 267; Supplement, 32; Granott, Land System, 278, gives the figure
181,000 dunums at the end of June 1947.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. - هو جزء من
- The Dispossession of the Peasantry
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- المنشئ
- Riyad Mousa
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