the right of return of Palestinian refugees and IDPs since 1948, it has also denied Palestinians their right to restitution of their homes and properties. A series of laws were passed by the Knesset with the intention of rendering any potential restitution process impossible through the confiscation and subsequent privatization of Palestinian land. Confiscation and Privatization of Properties of Displaced Palestinians Following the Nakba, gaining control of the lands of displaced Palestinians became one of the main objectives of the newly-established Israeli government.127 Israel immediately expropriated an estimated 17,178,000 dunums (17,178 km²) of land in 1948 from Palestinian refugees and afterwards continued to expropriate an additional 700,000 dunums (700 km²) from internally displaced Palestinians.128 The rights of Palestinians did not stand in the way, as first Prime Minister of Israel David Ben Gurion argued in 1948: “the war will give us the land. The concepts of ‘ours’ and ‘not ours’ are peace concepts, only, and in war they lose their meaning.”129 After 1948, the property of all forcibly displaced Palestinians was declared ‘absentee property’ and was transferred to a Custodian,130 based on the Emergency Regulations for Absentees’ Property of December 1948 that later became the 1950 Absentee Property Law. This Law defined ‘absentee’ broadly so that it applied to every Palestinian who had left their usual place of residence in Palestine after November 1947. Once the properties were acquired by the Custodianship Council for Absentee’s Property, which was, in theory, not allowed to sell the property, Israel was able to utilize and privatize the land (and the buildings that were on it)131 through a roll-out of additional laws in partnership with government and non-government agencies. In addition to the aforementioned legislation, the main laws used for such objectives were: · The 1950 Development Authority (Transfer of Property) Law, which gave the Development Authority broad powers to acquire and 127 Jad Isaac, The Israel-Palestine Conflict: Parallel Discourses (University of California Los Angeles Center for Middle East Development Series 1st ed., 2011), 68 128 BADIL, Survey of Palestinian Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons, 2002 (Bethlehem, Palestine), 3, available at: http://www.badil.org/phocadownload/Badil_docs/publications/Survey-2002.pdf . 129 Nur Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of “Transfer” in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948 (Washington: Institute for Palestine Studies 1992):180. 130 Absentee Property Law, supra note 95. 131 See Fischbach, Records of Dispossession, supra note 122, 48. 45