28 Israeli Land Grab and Forced Population Transfer of Palestinians rested with the State. An individual could, however, gain a right of use, or tassaruf, providing that they cultivated the land and paid a tithe.100 Article 3 of the Ottoman Land Code provides: … Possession of this kind of immovable property will henceforward be acquired by leave of and grant by the agent of the Government appointed for the purpose. Those who acquire possession will receive a title-deed... The sum paid in advance (muajele) for the right or possession which is paid to the proper Official for the account of the State, is called the tabou fee. The prescription period for miri land is 10 years between individuals and between the individual and the State. In the creation of new mulk land (not quasi mulk) the prescription period is 36 years.101 Article 68 of the Ottoman Land Code provided that continuous agricultural cultivation of miri land was necessary to retain tassaruf rights to the land. Should cessation of cultivation amount to three years or more, the rights would be extinguished. However, the Provisional Law regulating the Right to Dispose of Immovable Property of 1913, annulled this ‘continuous cultivation’ requirement by stipulating that: [W]hoever owns by virtue of a formal title deed [tabou/kushan] miri land… may transfer it absolutely… he is also entitled to cultivate the fields… He may erect on the land houses or shops or any buildings for industrial or agricultural use.102 These changes allowed those title-deed holders of miri land the right to make uses of the land other than agriculture. Therefore, ownership rights of the land were de facto transferred from the State to the individual who may do whatever he chooses with the land. The State of Israel may also recognize the owner of miri land (through titledeed) as the true owner who need not cultivate the land alone.103 Nevertheless, in the absence of a title-deed or registration in the Land Registry, the continuous 100 Frederic Maurice Goadby and Moses J. Doukhan, The Land Law of Palestine (Tel Aviv, 1935), 7. 101 Under the Mulk Tithes Act of 1874, the only ways that miri land could be converted into mulk land is (a) by…the relevant authority and (b) by prescription (36 years). This act also required registration of mulk land. 102 Provisional Law regulating the Right to Dispose of Immovable Property, 1913, Article 5; Tute, The Ottoman Land Code, 169–170. 103 Plia Albeck and Ran Fleischer, Land Law in Israel (Jerusalem, 2005), 50.