Land Confiscation Introduction 51 alone, 350 of the 370 new Jewish colonies were created on lands confiscated through the Absentees’ Property Law.192 In several respects, the Absentees’ Property Law is rooted in emergency ordinances issued by the Jewish leadership soon after the 1948 Nakba and subsequently incorporated into the laws of Israel. Examples are the Emergency Regulations (Absentees’ Property) Law, 5709-1948, and the Emergency Regulations (Requisition of Property), 5709-1949, and other related laws. Unlike laws that were designed to establish Israel’s ‘legal’ control over lands as relate in previous sections of this Chapter, this body of law focused on formulating a ‘legal’ definition for the Palestinians who were forced to flee from these lands.193 ‘Absentees’ Following the mass displacement of Palestinians from their homes and lands in 1948, Israel sought to legalize the appropriation of their lands. The Absentee Property Law of 1950 transfers the ownership of such lands to the State of Israel should the owner have been residing, even for a short while, in one of a list of territories outlined in the law between the 29th November 1947 and the day on which “it shall be declared that the state of emergency shall cease to exist”. As the ‘state of emergency’ is ongoing, the law continues to apply. Further, the law even applies to persons who left their ordinary places of residence in Palestine to another place in Palestine. Such persons are referred to as ‘Present Absentees’, to whom the Absentee Law also applies. Absentee property is any property within Israel that the ‘absentee’ owns or has a right to. This requirement that the property itself be located within the State of Israel applies to East Jerusalem subsequent to the 1967 annexation. Custodian The Custodian of Absentee Property is appointed by the Israeli Minister of Finance to retain possession of ‘absentee property’ pursuant to a prescribed manner. He is to be distinguished from the Custodian General who manages all property in Israel when the owners cannot be located. Ownership rights are automatically transferred to the Custodian of Absentee Property once a property fulfills the conditions outlined in the Law – i.e. the property belongs to an ‘absentee’ under the definition of the law. As these rights are automatically transferred no notice of this transfer is given to the owner and they may only be made aware of it when granted an eviction order, or when attempting to sell the property. 192 BADIL and COHRE, Ruling Palestine, 55. 193 BADIL and COHRE, Ruling Palestine, 41.