Summary
A system of village land ownership under which the whole property in a village is held in common and individual shares are revised and divided every two years, described in the Peel Commission Report as an obvious bar to agricultural development (Report of the Palestine Royal Commission, PDF p.230 / printed p.219).
Details
- There is no incentive to plant trees or even to manure land when ownership is to be transferred at an early date; endeavours to replace joint by individual ownership involve very lengthy negotiations (PDF p.230 / printed p.219).
- In 1923, 56 per cent of villages were musha’a; in 1930, 46 per cent. Many villages are believed musha’a in name but actually cultivated as individual parcels, though the system can be invoked for purposes of delay or litigation (PDF p.230 / printed p.219).
- The Report endorses the 1930 criticism that, though the examining committee had made radical proposals including legislation empowering the executive to enforce partition, “nothing had been done” (PDF p.230 / printed p.219).
- In certain areas the Arabs regard the system, destructive as it is of all development, as a safeguard against alienation, and the Administration have been reluctant for political reasons to abolish it by legislation; it is being broken up gradually by partition as land comes under settlement operations after cadastral survey (PDF p.230 / printed p.219).
- The 1913 Maritime Plain eyewitness account in the Report states that lands there were all held in musha’a ownership, measured by stick and rope and distributed among cultivators every second year, division always leading to strife and bloodshed (PDF p.244 / printed p.233).
Related pages
Report of the Palestine Royal Commission, Cultivable land, Lot viable