The Beisan lands issue in mandatory Palestine

Abstract

Land and its utilization, ownership and availability were vital issues in mandatory Palestine. Land is, of course, a basic resource in the life of individuals and nations. It is a primary means of livelihood and in this sense its importance increased as Palestine's population grew from about 600,000 in 1920 to approximately two million in 1947. This population growth placed extreme pressure on the land, especially when we remember that only about a third of the country was regarded as cultivable. Land also meant different things to Arabs and Jews. To the Arab it was his country, his patrimony. To the Jew the soil of Palestine was the focus of thousands of years of longing, the answer to Jewish landlessness, the nationalist solution to the Jewish problem. Land is also the span of national boundaries and its ownership took on strategic significance as two emerging nations struggled within the womb of a single state for the right to control Palestine west of the Jordan river. And, when the idea of partitioning Palestine between Arabs and Jews gained currency in international circles, land ownership became vital and Jewish land purchase and settlement policy was directed to maximizing the Zionist case for a sizeable Jewish state. With Britain pledged by the Balfour Declaration to use its 'best endeavours' to facilitate the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, Zionists expected the govenmment to foster actively Jewish immigration, land acquisition and settlement. Under the terms of the League of Nations' Mandate, Britain was required, 'while ensuring that the rights and position' of the non-Jewish population were 'not prejudiced', to encourage 'close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes'. A further article, relating to the development of the country, called on the mandatory power to 'introduce a land system appropriate to the needs of the country having regard ... to the desirability of promoting the close settlement and intensive cultivation of the land'. A senior Jewish National Fund official summarized his view of Britain's obligations with respect to land as follows: