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Books,,,
From Refugees To
Citizens
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- Location of Palestinian
Villages
Another Israeli claim is that all
village traces are lost and have been built over by housing for new
immigrants. Again, even if this were true, it would not undermine
the Right of Return: robbery of a property does not grant a title
deed to the robber. However, the claim is false. We have enough
records, maps, documents and registers, thanks to the British
Mandate, sufficient to retrace every dunum. This information is
available to Israel; on its basis it distributes Palestinian
property to new immigrants.
In Figures 10 and
11, all the existing built-up areas in Israel today have
been plotted. Superimposed on them are the sites of 531 towns and
villages depopulated by the Israelis in 1948. The striking result is
that the sites of the absolute majority of such villages are still
vacant. All village sites, except one each in the sub districts of
Safad, Acre, Tiberias and Nazareth, are vacant. Naturally, the area
most affected is the coastal strip, especially in the Tel Aviv
suburbs. There, a dozen village sites have been built over as a
result of the expansion of the city. The displaced refugees from
these built-over areas now number 110,000, or only 3 percent of all
registered refugees. The largest depopulated villages are Salama,
Yazur, and Beit Dajan, with a combined population of 75,000. A
number of village sites west of Jerusalem, and north and south of
Tel Aviv, have been also built over.
However, well over 90 percent of the village refugees could return
to empty sites. Of the small number of affected village sites, 75
percent are located on land totally owned by Arabs and 25 percent on
Palestinian land in which Jews have a share. Most affected villages
are small. Only 27 percent of the villages affected by new Israeli
construction have a present population of more than 10,000. The rest
are much smaller. See section12.5 and
Table 3 for futrher discussion.
The accommodation of the returning refugees from the affected
villages is fairly simple, at least from an operational point of
view: they could retain the property rights and grant a term lease
to existing occupants, most of which are institutions. Meanwhile,
they could rent or build housing for themselves in the vicinity. We
are, however, left with the comfortable prospect that the
overwhelming majority of the refugees would be able to return to
currently empty sites. Their re-housing should not be an
insurmountable problem, as will be shown in section (12.6).
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