The Dispossession of the Peasantry (ص 171)

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The Dispossession of the Peasantry (ص 171)

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155
also were agricultural laborers, the latter being their primary occupation. Given
what was argued earlier about other members of the production unit (i.e., the
family), compensating for the lost time of the wage earner, it seems that the figure
of 25 percent arrived at in the census is a very close approximation for landless
families. Doreen Warriner, writing in 1948, and using the same census of 1931,
had the same conclusion (i.e., 30,000 families were landless agricultural
workers) .!°
The second survey was conducted in 1936. It included 322 villages with a
total area of 3,250,000 dunums and a population of 242,000."°? Government-
owned lands were excluded from the survey, but large holdings of the Jewish
National Fund, P.I.C.A., and Waqf were included. Thus, as Loftus points out,
“The hoidings of the latter bodies constitute a high proportion of the largest
holding but unfortunately the records do not reveal the extent of these holdings and
in consequence the mean size of holding is considerably inflated by their
inclusion.”’® The results of the survey are reproduced in Table 3.7.
As Table 3.7 shows, the size distribution of holdings is very skewed. Forty-
seven percent of holdings represented only 3.3 percent of the total area of land for
holdings up to 9 dunums. On the other extreme 0.2 percent of holdings
encompassed 27.5 percent of the total land area. However, the removal of the
''Warriner, Land and Poverty, 63.
Government of Palestine, National Income of Palestine, 1944 (Jerusalem:
Government Printer, 1946), 41.
'Tbid.
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The Dispossession of the Peasantry

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المنشئ

Riyad Mousa

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