CASES WITHIN ISRAEL
Starting with its illegal seizure of the lands and properties of those
Palestinians forcibly displaced in 1948, Israel continues to implement a
discriminatory land confiscation and re-distribution policy.63 From 1950
onwards, Israel systematically introduced and enforced laws that effectively
sought to legitimize and legalize its policy of land confiscation. For example,
the Absentee Property Law and the guardianship role of the Custodian were
supposed to protect Palestinian refugee and IDP properties,64 but in practice
the law exposed these properties to mass expropriations by the state of
Israel and later, to privatization. The Israeli Land Laws of the 1960s further
facilitated this system of expropriation and privatization.
The roll-out of Israeli law was done regularly and systematically, facilitating
the incremental control and/or state ownership of land and property. The
main laws used for such objectives are listed below.
Landscape of Tel Aviv, built partially over the Palestinian villages of: Salameh, Summeil,
Sheikh Muwannis, Jammusin, and parts of the city of Jaffa. 2017 (©BADIL).
63 Adalah, Land and Planning Rights Database, available at: https://www.adalah.org/en/content/
index/2007 [accessed 25 August 2017].
64 Areej Sabbagh-Khoury, “The Internally Displaced Palestinians in Israel”, Jadal: Mada Al-Carmel
Arab Center for Applied Social Research, no. 3, May 2009, available at: https://web.archive.org/
web/20120331091408/http://jadal.mada-research.org/?LanguageId=1&System=Item&VolumeId=15
&MenuId=5&ItemId=138 [accessed 19 September 2017].
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