Chapter One Land Confiscation and Israeli Legislation in Palestine 1948 The policy of land confiscation and denial of use in Palestine 1948 has manifested in two primary ways: use of force and Israeli legislation. The process began with (A) the use of force initiated by Zionist militias, and (B) was then consolidated through different Israeli legislation, but also through (C) restrictions on the use and access to land. A. Use of Force Land confiscation through acts of violence started before the creation of Israel (1) and peaked with the Nakba in 1948 (2). 1. Organized Violence Pre-Creation of Israel The Zionist-Israeli weaponization of land confiscation through use of force already began in the late 1940s,4 within the boundaries of what would become the State of Israel. It peaked following United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181(II), which recommended the partition of Mandatory Palestine into two states, one Palestinian and one Jewish, with the latter allotted 56 percent of the land, despite having a population of less than one third of all those in Palestine at the time, and owning no more than seven percent of the land. Ahead of the withdrawal of Great Britain from Palestine, Zionist militias developed and implemented a number of military plans, such as Plans Aleph to Dalet (1945-1948),5 which utilized 4 BADIL, Land Confiscation and Denial of Use: Working Paper 21, 2017, 12, Available at https://www.badil.org/cached_uploads/view/2021/04/19/wp21-lc-1618823891. pdf [hereinafter BADIL, Land Confiscation and Denial of Use]. 5 Simha Flapan, The Palestinian Exodus, Journal of Palestine Studies, 1978, 7, Available at https://www.palestine-studies.org/sites/default/files/attachments/jps-articles/ exodus.pdf 3