develop property to allow it to be sold, and established that it was only allowed to sell land to the state, the Jewish National Fund (JNF) or to institutions approved by the government; · The 1953 Land Acquisition (Validation of Acts and Compensation) Law, which allowed the Custodian to vest ownership of the appropriated Palestinian lands into the Development Authority for the development of Israel; · The 1960 Basic Law: Israel Lands, which defined “Israel Lands” as lands in the ownership of the state, JNF and the Development Authority and established that lands managed by the Israel Lands Administration shall not be transferred; · The 1960 Israel Lands Administration Law, which granted certain powers to approve the sale, transfer, and lease of “Israel Lands” with the approval of the Israel Lands Council ; and, · The 1961 Covenant between the government and the JNF, which granted the JNF 50 percent representation on the Israel Lands Council even though the JNF only owned 13 percent of “Israel Lands.” This law culminated in the gradual transfer of Palestinian lands to JewishIsraelis, as it gave the JNF a strong and influential position in the Israel Lands Council to manage all “Israel Lands,” not only the portion it owned directly. Tenders for JNF lands are only open to Jewish-Israelis. This explicitly excludes non-Jews (namely Palestinians) from accessing land under the administration of the JNF. The intentions behind the gradual transfer of the properties of displaced Palestinians to Israel were covered in depth by Michael Fischbach in his book Records of Dispossession: Palestinian Refugee Property and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: “One of the most successful operations of clearing peasants from their land was articulated by Yosef Weitz, the director of the Jewish National Fund. He proposed after the end of the 1948 war what became known as a policy of “retroactive transfer,” in a memorandum appropriately entitled “A Scheme for the Solution of the Arab Question in Israel.” The memo summarized measures which essentially would “prevent the return of Palestinian refugees [to their homes]; prevent Palestinian farmers from cultivating their abandoned fields; and settle Jewish immigrants in 90 abandoned villages; and destroy the remainder of the abandoned villages.” When Ben-Gurion agreed to all these measures but objected to the last clause (apparently for utilitarian reasons), 46