Village Statistics 1945: A Classification of Land and Area Ownership in Palestine (ص 20)
غرض
- عنوان
- Village Statistics 1945: A Classification of Land and Area Ownership in Palestine (ص 20)
- المحتوى
-
Village Statistics 1945
20 and where the costs of production outweighed the yield from the land. Owner-
ship of these categories of land is as follows:
Arabs 4,969,395> or 29.03%
Jews 314,954 or 1.84%
Public 1,260,026 or 7.30%
The unassigned ‘uncultivable’ lands of
the Beersheba sub-district 10,573,110 or 61.83%
Total 17,117,485
The figures in the ‘Village Statistics 1945’ were compiled from two
sources :
(1) ‘Where settlement of title to land had been completed in any village
(2)
or part thereof, the Tax Distribution Lists for such lands were com-
piled to conform with the names of owners and ateas appearing in
the Land Settlement records.®
Where no land settlement of title operations had taken place, the
data for the ‘Village Statistics’ were extracted from the lists of tax-
payers prepared by a village tax distribution committee which was
specifically appointed under the Rural Property Tax Ordinance to
distribute the tax assessed on the lands of the village.
Since the tax was the criterion, the tax distribution committee
ignored non-taxable land, and in the majority of cases did not enter
_ any particulars in the tax lists about such lands. This was not unusual
as it had always been the practice, since Ottoman times, to ignore
non-taxable land.
As regards the Beersheba sub-district, the names of the tax-payers
were extracted from the Commutation of Tithes Lists which showed
the tax due by tribe or sub-tribe, but seldom gave the names of the
individuals. At any rate, areas of land were ignored.
When the Department of Land Settlement began the preparation of
the schedules on which the ‘Village Statistics’ was based, it was
realized that the total area of the village as it actually existed did
not tally with the figures extracted from the fiscal records for non-
settled land. And so, for the purpose of convenience, the difference
was entered in the ‘Village Statistics’ under the column of ‘Public’
whether or not it was owned by Government. Strictly speaking, this
action was not in order because no authority other than the tax dis-
tribution committee was entitled to alter the records in this respect. It
was the function of the committee to divide the land and apportion
(5) Of this, 60,446 dunums were recorded in the ‘Village Statistics 1945’ under
the column of ‘Others.’
(6) The settlement of title to land was completed in only about 5 per cent of the
total lands of Palestine when the Mandate came to an end on 14 May 1948. - تاريخ
- سبتمبر ١٩٧٠
- المنشئ
- Hadawi, Sami
- هداوي، سامي
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