Summary
The November 1921 agreement under which the Government lands of Beisan, Semakh and Ghorul Fara’a were settled with their Arab tenants, whose terms Simpson gives in Chapter VII and whose September 1928 revision he blames for a considerable land speculation in the Beisan lands (Palestine: Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development, lines 1843-1861).
Details
- By the original agreement, Article 1 created property in favour of the existing cultivators in the lands they cultivated; Article 5 provided Metruke land as necessary for the requirements of the village; Article 8 fixed a minimum holding of 150 dunams per family; Article 9 provided for tribal areas and transfers to families of a tribe that had generally lived and cultivated on the West side of the Jordan; and Article 16 barred any disposition of the land, except by mortgage to the Government or by succession, until the whole transfer price (badal tatweeb) had been paid — “a very wise provision” (lines 1843-1845).
- The 1928 revision, published in the Official Gazette of 16 September 1928, waived that requirement under two conditions: surplus land be transferred only to persons approved by the Government with the object of close settlement and intensive cultivation, and the transferee retain land sufficient, in the Government’s opinion, for the maintenance of himself and his family. Simpson notes that at the time of the original agreement no grant of surplus land to any individual was contemplated (lines 1847-1857).
- The whole of the Beisan lands have been distributed, large areas have already been sold and further large areas are in the market; the vendor transfers the liability for the price still owing to the Government and takes in addition £3 to £4 a dunam for Jordan Valley land. Simpson holds that these proceedings invalidate the argument for the original agreement — to provide Arabs with a holding sufficient for a decent standard of life, not with land to speculate in (line 1859).
- Simpson calls the result, politically desirable as the settlement may have been, the loss of Government control of a large fertile area with ample irrigation water, whose water is at present used exceedingly uneconomically (lines 1843, 1861).
Related pages
Palestine: Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development, Mandate for Palestine