EBUCK
Here is an example of some of the process in land purchasing and land issue in that area:Other instances of purchased land by the Jews in the Mandate. Arab money lenders foreclosing on fellaheen. Jews purchased the land and paid the debts of the fellaheen (Arieh L. Avneri, The Claim of Dispossession (1984), p. 207):
The fellaheen of Taiyibe, Tira, Tamra and Na'ura had mortaged their lands to money lenders, mostly the family of Abd el-Hadi. Gradually the mortagagees acquired title to large portions of the land. The situation became critical. The fellaheen were unable to repay their loans and there was an immediate danger that they would lose all their land. In order to get free of the oppressive moneylenders they sought to sell part of their holding, a tract of 50,000 dunam.
They turned to Hankin and offered to sell the land to the Jewish National Fund, if it would undertake to pay their debts. The Jewish National Fund bought these lands during the years 1936-39. The fellaheen escaped the embrace of the moneylenders...
Many of the landowners in the Mandate who sold land to the Jews were not even "Palestinians". Ex: (Avneri, p. 201) Most of the land in the Hills of Naftali was the property of absentee owners, residents of Syria and Lebanon. In March 1940 Nahmani made a survey of the holdings of landowners who were not Palestinian citizens. He found they owned a total of 83,467 dunam in the Districts of Safed and Tiberias, 26,000 dunam in the Safed District and 7,000 dunam in the Tiberias District were owned by Circassians, Druse, Iranians and Germans. None of these landowners were citizens of Palestine. .....Ahmed Mardini, a Kurd from Damascus, owned 2,200 dunam; Hassan Farah, a Christian from Marj Iyun, owned 2,000 dunam; and 520 dunam were owned by Abdullah Khuri and the heirs of Shahadrin Khuri, all of whom were from Lebanon...The village of Malkiya, comprising 765 dunam, was owned by the heirs of Hussein Sulayman Buza, Moslem Kurds living in Damascus, and was sold to the Jewish National Fund....[etc.]
Avneri gives one example of the benefit the Jews brought to the land in purchasing these tracts of land (p. 207-08) The P.I.C.A. [Jewish Agency involved in land puchases] owned 2,354 dunam in the village of Tira. It had bought the land many years previously, but had never extablished a Jewish settlement there, and it was being worked by tenant farmers. In 1946 the Jewish National Fund bought the land and undertook to indemnify the tenant farmers. It paid them LP. 6,097 as a compensation and also bought their houses and adjoining gardens for an additional LP. 9,548. The fellaheen who remained in Tira as neighbors to the Jewish settlers gained a further major benefit when malaria was eradicated from the area. Two years before the land was bought in Tira, Dr. Sliternik, the head of the Jewish Agency's Health Department, visited the village with a view to planning for the eradication of the disease. He found that..."almost all the villagers suffered from malaria....The danger is redoubled because of the many swamps in the area, over which we have no control or supervision...." Once the tract was bought the swamps were drained, and the Jewish and Arab settlements were freed from the disease.
The fellaheen of the above-mentioned villages had lived on the land for many generations and had struck roots in the villages. Not so with the fellaheen of the Mugrabi villages. Half their lands were owned by emirs, descendants of exiles who had accompanied Abd el-Kader, who for the most part were living in Syria.
Many moderate Arabs (finally silenced after the Mufti led Islamic riots of 1936-39) sold the land to the Jews despite the hypocritical threats of other pan-Arab nationalists. Ex.: (Avneri, p. 209):
The Fahum family of Nazareth sold the Fund [Jewish Nationalist Fund] a 3,000-dunam tract of land "in fee simple and free of tenant farmers." The head of the family, Yussuf Fahum, who was mayor of Nazareth for a time, sold his land despite terrorist threats. According to the Jewish National Fund functionaries who dealt with him, he was a proud man and he despised the hypocritical Arab public figures who sold land to Jews in secret and then gave vent to extreme nationalist utterances. He effected the sale openly and publicly without resorting to intermediaries or fictive owners.
For many years, the moshava Hadera, whose lands had been bought in 1891, was not troubled by land disputes and by claims of displaced people. In 1929, the neighboring Arabs began filing claims on lands that the moshava, had allegedly stolen from them. The Arabs from Fuqara filed a claim for 5,000 dunam; those from Arab ed-Demair claimed 150 dunam; and the Nufeiat Arabs seized a tract of 1,200 dunam. The latter claimed that the land belonged to them, and they were adamant in their refusal to leave. The claims of the Fuqara and el-Damair Arabs were disallowed in court. The trial on the claim of the Nufeiat Bedouins was held on July 24-31, 1930. The Court found against them. They appealed, and a Court of Appeals with A. Plunkett, 'Ali Hasne Effendi and A. De Frites as judges heard the case. Judgment was rendered in Nablus on December 5, 1930 denying the appeal. A copy of the decision was forwarded to the Colonial Office, which received ongoing information on the situation in the country in general, and especially on the cases before the Land Court. The Nufeiat Bedouins, according to the P.E.F. Map of 1878, were totally new to the area north of Hadera - they had been encamped south of the Wadi Hawarith. Nevertheless they persisted in claiming that the land sold in 1891 belonged to them. The Bedouins might have abandoned their claim, had it not been for the support of the Waqf and the Supreme Muslim Council [political Islamic organs during the British Mandate].
Another methodology of the Arabs, in their attempt to rewrite history on the ground and extort the land from the Jews would occur, especially in Urban areas, when the rich Urban Arab absentee landlords would sell land to the Jews. What occurred was that the Arabs would sell the land in legitimate transactions to the Jews and the Arab landlord would then encourage and foment other Arabs to attack the Jews with the hopeful expectation the Jews would vacate the newly purchased land. Avneri describes the typical scenario (p.179):
The Arabs never charged that the Jewish urban community in any way interfered with the development of the Arab towns or that it displaced Arabs from the existing towns. The reason no such charge was made was that the city plots sold to the Jews were sold by rich urban Arabs, who were often themselves the spokesmen of the Arab nationalist movement. Some had even organized the gangs of hoodlums who attacked the Jewish quarters in the cities - the very sections which they themselves had sold to the Jews.
Many times the Arabs simply did not respect the rule of law and blatantly flouted it notwithstanding the legitimate land purchases by the Jews. Example (p. 188):
The Government had sold land in Ashrafiya to some prominent Arab families who could prove, as it were, that they had previously owned the land in the area. In 1929 the P.I.C.A. (Jewish Committee involved in land purchasing) bought 2,000 dunam of land from these families. The Jewish National Fund acquired an additional 4,300 dunam. During the period of the riots [1936-39 Grand Mufti led Arab Islamic riots against Jews, British, and moderate Arabs] local Arabs seized theses tracts of land and held them. In 1940, after the seige on Jewish settlements had been lifted, the P.I.C.A. and the Jewish National Fund sought to reassert their lawful ownership. The Arab squatters made various claims to title and to alleged rights in the real property. Their claims were heard, as was customary, in the land court, and were all disallowed. The Jews, pursuant to the Court's finding, sought to plow the lands, but the Arabs did all they could to hinder them and refused to leave the area in dispute.
The beneficiaries to State owned land from the British, were largely the Arabs. The British had sold scant State owned land to the Jews which clearly was in abrogation of Article 6 of the Mandate. However, to give you an idea of how the Arabs squandered a lot of this land and were unable, unlike the Jews, to bring life from the land, in the end giving up and selling the land to the Jews, Avneri gives one example (pp. 187-188):
The Arab National Company of Nablus was one of the beneficiaries of the Government's generous land grants in the Beit-Shean Valley. It received a tract of 1,200 dunam for intensive cultivation, to serve as a model for the Bedouins in the Valley. At the same time that the Arab leadership was carrying on its violent struggle against the Jews, other Arab leaders sought to evolve a constructive policy, which would not only prevent the sale of land to Jews but would improve the lot of the fellah as well. Thus the Arab People's Fund and the Arab National Company provided the fellaheen with instructors to teach them how to grow bananas. The crops failed. The fellaheen, on the advice of their instructors, uprooted the bananas and planted citrus goves, and also tried to raise vegetables. These projects failed as well. In the end these lands were sold to the Jewish National Fund.