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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.