Lubya a palestinian demolished Village in Galilee Memory-History-Culture-Identity Mahmoud Issa Preface

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Signature____Registrar of Lands/Tiberias

The Department of Lands in Jerusalem sent an answer to the Registrar of Lands in Tiberias on 29 August 1923, approving the contents of the letter but demanding additional information and asking for kushans to be presented, signed by the mukhtar and countersigned by two notables. In the case of Khalil Ibrahim Mustafa, a certificate was requested to confirm that, “He is the undisputed owner of 16/24 shares in the two plots Foka and Koudrat (Koudran^¹³²) and that this land was neither sold nor mortgaged. Also Saleh bin Amin El Ali Osman has not empowered Mahmoud El Ksein (Husayn) to make partition on his behalf and until this is done the partition cannot be effected....”

On 26 December 1923 and in answer to a letter from the Registrar of Lands/Tiberias, the office of the Department Lands in Jerusalem wrote: “There is not sufficient evidence to prove that Um el Suyuf, Tloul, Mahabeh Baraness, Maatordeh, Maabar, and Um Leben (names of plots of land in Lubya) were previously registered in the name of the ICA [JCA]. You should therefore collect 5 percent of the market value as registration fees, for the share of the ICA subjects to a special clause being added to the mukhtar’s certificate and the co-owners admission stating clearly that the period of undisputed possession exceeds 10 years.”
On the same day another letter from the Land Department /Jerusalem confirmed that:
The agent of the ICA must lodge a written declaration to the effect that, though the registration appears to include the whole of the 11 plots, the ICA owns only 21/24 shares and that the remainder 3/24 shares belong to Abdil Rahman Ibn Abdil Aziz B’Akkar.
The declaration must state clearly that the ICA admits that Abdil Rahman owns 3/24 shares not only in the localities Mahabeh Tahta, Mahabeh Foka, Kita’at Sheikh Ahmad, Um Leben, and Hajar for which kushans were produced, but in all the 11 plots mentioned in the petition.... You may register the 21/24 shares of the ICA by way of correction in accordance with the order of Court charging the usual fees, together with the 3/24 shares of Abdel-Rahman by way of new registration.
The ICA owned only a small portion of the land and the Governor in Jerusalem refused to sanction partition. In a letter, dated 27 December 1923, the answer came to the Registrar of Lands/Tiberias:
1. The petition for partition is wrong. Um Enick and Tell cannot be partitioned, since according to the mukhtars’ certificate and your explanations the shares owned by the JCA and the heirs of Younis el Ahmad amount together to 1/5 only, and the validity of a partition depends upon the agreement of all the parties having interest in the land.
2. No kushan is produced by the JCA for the plot called “Baraness” and no registration can be allowed unless a certificate of mukhtar is produced stating clearly that the JCA is in an undisputed possession for a period of ten years.
The headquarters of the Jewish Colonisation Association in Haifa was dissatisfied with the way the registration process was conducted. Its representative, therefore, wrote to the Director of Lands in Jerusalem on 8 January 1924 asking for either partition or exchange with the lands owners (the Lubyans), and protesting against the registration fees demanded by the Mandate authorities.
This document gives us insight into the concept of partition (or exchange), which resulted in the separation of neighbours, and in laying the groundwork for a future separate social and political entity. This concept was already encompassed within the Balfour Declaration of November 1917 that speaks of the establishment of a Jewish home in Palestine.
The letter reads as follows:
Sir,

The registration of Lubieh village as comprised in the Turkish registers consists of small plots, having some dunums each.

Our society possesses some shares in each plot, sometimes represented by two or more kushans, and which are entered on the name of Nathan Narcis Leven, as nominee. We are at present arranging for the correction of Nominee into the name of our society and partition or exchange with our co-owners. We obtained the necessary order of court and applied to the Land Registry, Tiberias for registration.
On passing through the registers we have found that the Turkish registers are missing so we were compelled, in accordance with instructions, to survey the lands in question consisting of nearly the whole of the above mentioned village. Said extensive work cost us many troubles and expenses but the result is of great use to the Tabu as it is helping for the arrangement of registration up to date.
It seemed to us that this work should have been met by the Land Registry with the greatest help in order to facilitate transactions in the villages, which were blocked to the present for reason of missing registers and villages being unable to pay survey fees for the new registration of their lands.
On the contrary we have noticed that the Land Registry is creating great difficulties as regarding the payment of fees. We paid ½ percent fees to the Land Court and we were prepared to pay P.25. for correction of Nominee for each plot as prescribed by the Schedule of fees and ½ percent for partition fees, but we are amazed to see that your Department is asking us to pay another P.25. for each kushan as fees for correction of area. It is well known that the Turkish registration never did correspond with reality and no kushan could be exact on Survey. Moreover the survey of our lands in Loubieh show generally a diminution in the area stated in the kushan and we see no profit in order to pay so much for the correction of area.
We are not guilty if registers were lost from the Land Registry and we do agree voluntarily that new registration should be effected in accordance with Turkish Kushans and without survey.
We have to pay at present registration and partition fees for us and for the inhabitants of the village, then are prepared to combine our share into one kushan what amounts to nearly the whole value of the land itself.
We are therefore asking your Excellency for the reconsideration of area and order the Land Registry Tiberias for charging only P.25. for each plot as correction of Nominee or at the maximum to charge only one P.25. for each kushan.
Hoping that our request meets your kind consideration.
We remain, Sir, yours faithfully

Jewish Colonisation Association

(Signature)
On 27 May 1924, a letter from the Land Office in Tiberias to Jerusalem’s Director of Lands confirmed the refusal by the villagers to register the ICA plots through Nachmani. “The agent of ICA applies for registration of eleven plots the registers in which same were entered are missing kushans for same as well as Masbata is produced. The society owns of said plots only 12/24 and the other half belongs to other persons who are not willing to co-operate in the registration applied....”
Another example for the way land was mortgaged was given in a letter dated 21 January 1931, and written by the Tiberias Registrar to the Director of Lands in Jerusalem, concerning a villager whose mortgaged share of his lands ended in the hands of PICA.
1. From the records available in this office, I discovered that Mustafa bin Ali originally owned 7 plots of land in whole and 2/5 shares in three other plots.

2. On March 1298h\ 1880 the above sold 1/2 of his properties to Abdel Mejid Ramadan, which share has in January been mortgaged to Ziki Eff. Beidoun, sold by auction to Abdel-Ghani Beidoun and then to Nathan Narcis Leven (PICA)...

4. On Shebat 1306h\ 1888 Mustafa el Ali mortgaged the properties registered in his name as per kushans Nos 113-122 to Abdel-Ghani Beidoun.
The last official papers referring to transactions, registration processes, and petitions concerning land up to 1935 can be found in documents available at the Israeli State Archives. It was natural for the period 1936-1939, known to the Palestinians as “the Great Revolt” to witness the highest number of confrontation incidents between Palestinians and Jews.
There was, however, one other reference to land sales in Lubya, attributed to a preacher who came to Lubya to preach. Sha’ban Salman, preacher of al-Hula district, visited Lubya for three days in March 1936. In his report he wrote that the Jews had bought plots of land on which they had established a settlement. In his religious preaching throughout Tiberias and al-Hula district villages, he urged people not to sell their land either to the Jews or to Arab brokers. He added that an individual from the Arabs of al-Samairi who lived in al-Ghowair near Tiberias, had sold 4,000 dunums to someone from ‘Akka, and that the latter had then sold them to PICA.^¹³³
In his report, dated 3 March 1936, preacher Sha’ban mentioned in detail how 65,000 dunums of the lands of al-Hula were sold to PICA. The Lebanese, Aal-Salam, and Syrians owned 100,000 dunums in the area, while the people from al-Hula owned only 30,000 dunums. The Turkish Sultan Abd al-Hamid also owned a large part of the land. He gave the right to A’l-Salam to dry the lake of al-Hula. After twenty-five years Aal-Salam still failed to do that; so the Turks gave PICA permission to finish the project. In return, PICA was given part of al-Hula.
The last document concerning the matter to be found in the Israeli State Archives was written by Muhammad Abdel-Rahman Muhammad and his brothers Hauran and Mutlak, as well as their nephews Muhammad Said and Lutfi Said. It was written on 16 July 1947, not to the British authorities but in Arabic to the vice president of the Higher Arab Committee, Mufti Amin al-Husayni.
The subject matter of the letter concerned the 50 dunums of land bordering Hazoriim settlement. Their complaint was that,
The Zionists are using our land all the time, summer and winter, by roads that cross the land. The intention of the Zionists”, the letter continues, “is to oblige us to sell our land, which we will never do as long as we live.” They wrote: “PICA accepted the exchange of land for another much nearer to our houses, and they will give us two dunums for every dunum of our land”.
“We saw that this exchange is to our advantage and does not harm our national interest, and, instead of committing a crime in retaliation against the aggressive actions of the Jews, we would like to receive your approval for the deal”.
“If we committed a mistake which could discredit the interest of our nation, which has the highest priority, we would be willing to sacrifice a piece of our land for it (al-Watan). The Tabu papers and the registration offices are the best witnesses on our behalf”.

(Signed, Muhammad Abdel-Rahman Muhammad)
This letter entered the files of the Arab Committee on 26 July 1947. From the interviews I have conducted, I learned that the answer to their request was negative. It was forbidden to sell or exchange any piece of land with the enemy.
The 'Absentees'
On the eve of the war in Palestine in 1948, the Zionist movement had yet to acquire sufficient land to establish a viable Jewish state. The mass displacement and expulsion of the Palestinian population during the war, however, proved to be what many Zionist leaders referred to as the “lasting and radical solution” of this “most vexing problem of the Jewish state.”^¹³⁴ Without the extensive lands and homes of the Palestinians it is unlikely that a Jewish state would have survived.^¹³⁵
One of the first measures adopted by the provisional government of the new state was a series of abandoned property laws^¹³⁶ regulating the expropriation and confiscation of movable and immovable property within any area conquered by Israeli forces or deserted by part or all of its residents. The government also established an office of a so-called Custodian of Abandoned Property. In 1950 Israel adopted a new law known as the Absentees’ Property Law.^¹³⁷
According to this law all Palestinians who left under conditions of war lost the right to their property, even if they fled to a nearby city or village in Israel when it was established in 1948. The government also accorded itself the authority to 'legally' transfer the property of Palestinian refugees – i.e., absentees – to the state by virtue of a government payment to the Israeli Custodian of Absentees' Property who replaced the Custodian of Abandoned Property. Israeli officials thus claimed that the refugee properties had been acquired in a 'legal' manner.
While I was conducting interviews with Lubyans in Israel, I made a visit to the Nazareth Land Registration Office. There I discovered a document listing the names of 240 Lubyans who were declared absentees under Article 30(a) of the 1950 Absentees' Property Law. I also disovered a bill of sale, No. 40/53, in the Land and Registration Department of the Ministry of Justice. The contract of the sale was dated 24 December 1952. According to the terms of the contract, Ibrahim Akayba, representative of the Israel Development Authority^¹³⁸, paid 87,894 liras and 280 bruta to Mordachai Shitner, representative of the Office of the Custodian for Absentees' Property.^¹³⁹
(See Annex IV – Names of 240 ‘Absentees’ from Lubya)
This amount, without interest, is equivalent at today’s prices (1999) to 1,007,264 shekels or US$ 308,314. (If the consumer price index is added to today’s prices with the due interest of 4 percent per year, the price would be 1,558,407 shekels or US$ 477,014). This is the theoretical price of the entire land of Lubya. It does not, however, correspond to the real prices of today, for only professional people in the high income bracket can afford to rent an apartment in Giv’at Avni, one of the Jewish settlements built on Lubya’s lands.

Only two Lubyans were permitted access to some of the land of the village after 1948. This included Mustafa Abu Dhais, the mukhtar's son, who was known for his close relations with British and Zionist officials before 1948. “My uncle came to Israel in 1973,” said Husam [last name]. “He stayed until 1984. When he arrived here, he lived in our house. Then they gave him two apartments in Tiberias. They gave him two plots (kasayim) from the land in Dayr Hanna, in exchange for his land in Lubya.” This was confirmed by other Lubyans, including Yousef al-Yousef, who said Mustafa had around seven or eight dunums of land, which he exchanged for land in Dayr Hanna.

In addition to the land in Lubya, Husam said that his uncle “also had 23 dunums in Daboria. He had good relations with the Jews before the war in 1948. When he came here all the leadership of the state, including Moshe Dayan, Chaim Bar Lev and others, received him. He had a lot of friends in [the Jewish settlements of ] al-Shajara and Yamma. He refused to give us a piece of land in Daboria. The sons of my uncle in Jordan were totally against him.”
Abu Muhammad Kilani, another Lubyan who remained inside Israel after the 1948 war, refused to invite Mustafa to his son’s wedding because of the bad reputation that shrouded Mustafa after the rumours were spreading that he sold his land in Lubya to the Israelis. “Mustafa came here at the time my sons were getting married. A friend of mine, Abu Nasir from Kufr Kanna, asked me to invite him to the wedding. I apologised to him, for I believed that it would have been better for Lubya’s reputation had he not come back at all. He came back, discredited himself, and left.”
The only other Lubyan still allowed to use part of the village land is Salah Shehada (Abu Nimr). [suspicion, see earlier] “In 1955 I started renting land in Lubya from Minhal Mikarka’én, the Israel Lands Administration^¹⁴⁰, to plant trees and for other agricultural purposes. I started by paying 4,000 Israeli liras, and now I pay almost 10 to 15,000 shekels per year. I am now renting 180 dunums for olive trees and 50 dunums for other agricultural products. I was also given permission to build on this land for 49 years. I am now there already for 45 years. All the deserted villages were for rent after the people left. The villages that the Jews did not choose were rented to the Arabs who stayed in Palestine.”
“In 1959-1960 the Lands Administration came to Lubya and started planting pine trees in the graveyard. I protested against this, especially after a shepherd told me that he saw the bones of the dead in the graveyard. After I lodged my protest, the manager came carrying a fatwa (a religious order) from Sheikh Taher al-Tabari in Nazareth, stating that the latter had given his agreement according to a Muslim tradition that does not forbid people to plant trees in graveyards. But I protested again, because I saw that they were uprooting the whole graveyard under the pretext of planting the trees, and I succeeded in stopping the project. I actually have land both in Saffuriyya and Lubya. It was always my wish to live in Lubya. I am the only Arab who continued to rent Arab land.

Chapter Seven

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