The Land Registry: Fill & Download for Free

Actually the land registries of the Mandate for Palestine, stored in a Haifa warehouse by the British Foreign Office would be the determining evidentiary factor.Since 1948, several thousand claims have been settled in Israel in courts based on the information in those land registries to the satisfaction of the suitors, who were either the actual owners of record or their legitimate heirs.At this point in time, it’s questionable how many genuine claims are left to appeal, since the land registries show that local Arabs owned no more than 8% of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, with the vast majority being state land (just over 3/4 in fact), which could not be owned by any individual. Those who lived on state land (whether leased or squatted on illegally) or on land owned by absentee Arab landlords living outside the Mandate might be able to sue for any improvements made on the land, but not for the value of the land itself, since tenants and illegal squatters have no claims to any right of ownership.Settlements came in three “flavors”: return of the same parcel of land; award of a similar, acceptable parcel of and or a financial settlement determined by an independent property appraiser.

I’m disappointed that Erdogan thinks he can show a propaganda map that’s been debunked multiple times, present it as fact and get away with it. Here’s the same map with explanations as to why it’s false:There never was a “Palestine” under the Ottomans, the area was a collection of administrative districts. Taken together, 76% of the land that became the Mandate for Palestine was state land, first Ottoman, then Mandate land. Local Arabs never owned more than 10% of the land area. By 1948, according to Mandate land registries, the remaining 24% of the land was divided more or less evenly between three factors: absentee Arab landowners outside of the Mandate, local Arabs and Jews.Truth has never been a major factor in the Palestinian narrative.

This question is not only inciting, it’s mendacious as well.Anyone who has the patience and takes the time to study the land registries from the Ottoman-British Mandate period can find that in 1948, 76% of the Mandate land was state land, which could not be owned by any individual, only leased at most.The remaining 24% was split between three groups, more or less evenly: absentee Arab landowners living outside the Mandate, local Arab individuals or clans and Jewish individuals or organizations.Much of the land owned by local Arabs was concentrated in two areas: the “West Bank” and the Gaza Strip (approx. 3% of the 8% owned by local Arabs).Since you can’t “take away” anything from someone who never had it, this question is biased and based on propaganda and not fact.It’s an interesting fact that after the Mavi Marmara incident in 2010, Turkey allowed the PA to send researchers to Ankara to study the Ottoman records in the hope of finding support for additional claims of ownership. The group came up empty after searching through the Ankara archives for six months.During the time between 1948 and today, several thousand small claims have been settled by Israeli courts to the satisfaction of the appellants, either by return of the land, awards of an acceptable equivalent parcel of land or financial compensation acceptable to the appellant. This, of course, is never reported by the “Palestinians” and can only be found in the records of Israeli courts. The OP here has certainly never attempted to find the truth.