serve – as a “legal” foundation for the expropriation of individually and communally-owned Palestinian land.110 Palestinian citizens of Israel and refugees have thereby been deprived of title, access and use of their land, and even of reparations. Today, 93 percent of the land in Israel is owned either by the state or by quasigovernmental agencies (such as the Jewish National Fund) and administered by the Israel Land Authority, whose managerial council is composed of representatives from the government and the Jewish National Fund.111 The purpose of the Jewish National Fund, according to its Memorandum of Association, is to systematically acquire land in Palestine “for the purpose of settling Jews on such lands”.112 This same memorandum also stipulated that the organization could only lease land to Jews, and prohibited it from selling any land it acquired.113 Israeli Discrimination Against Palestinians Living in Israel114 “I was born in Wadi Ara in 1951,a few years after the Nakba. Fortunately my family was one of the few Palestinians families that were not forcibly displaced during the Nakba. What remained of the Palestinian villages were under Israeli military surveillance for 24 hours a day along with the roads that connected the villages. We were under daily harassment and inspections by the Israeli military. They used to raid the villages and the houses and destroy the wheat, sugar and lentils stocks or any basic livelihood component. Intimidations were ongoing. My father was a farmer, we had a big plot of land in the valley of our village and we also had a small house there, so my father used to stay there and work the land all week and then get back home in the weekend. Our land was not far away from our home, but he could not risk to go and come back every day, as he used to do before 1948. When I finished the eighth grade, there was no secondary school in my village, so I had to go to school in al-Taybeh, which is one hour away from Wadi Ara. Because of the hardship of movement during the military regime, I used to go on Sunday morning to al-Taybeh and 110 For more information see BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, “Israeli Land Grab and Forced Population Transfer of Palestinians, A Handbook for Vulnerable Individuals and Communities”, June 2013. Available at: http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/ handbook2013.pdf 111 For more information see BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, “The Jewish National Fund: A Para-State Institution in the Service of Colonialism and Apartheid”, al-Majdal, Winter - Spring 2010. Available at: http://www.badil.org/phocadownload/Badil_docs/publications/ al-majdal-43.pdf 112 Walter Lehn, “The Jewish National Fund”, Journal of Palestine Studies Vol. 3, Issue 4, Summer 1974, page 82. Available at: http://www.caiaweb.org/old-site/files/Lehn-JNF.pdf 113 Ibid. Page 77 114 BADIL’s interview with Akram Hilmi, “Israeli Discrimination Against Palestinians Living in Israel”, Wadi Ara , October 2015 33