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Mawat land doctrine

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"Mawat" ("dead land") was an Ottoman legal category used to classify lands as unused ("dead") land, and thus as state land.[1][2] This legal category is related to the terra nullius concept, used during the colonial period to classify "land without a sovereign." Critics refer to the interpretation of this legal category by the State of Israel as the Mawat land doctrine, under which many Palestinians, particularly in the Negev, were dispossessed based on this legal basis. An alternative term for this is, therefore, the "Dead Negev Doctrine".

History

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Origins: Ottoman period

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A distinctive feature of the Ottoman Empire was that it had many unstable border regions in the south, as these were inhabited by various nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes, such as the Bedouins, Kurds, or Turkomans.[3]

The principles of the mawat legal category were established in the Ottoman Land Code of 1858. Its formulation occurred during the so-called Tanzimat era, which fell firstly between the brief conquest of Ottoman Palestine by the Egyptians in the 1830s and the Taba Crisis of 1892-1906, during which the British, having by then colonized Egypt, gradually wrested away the Sinai Peninsula from the Ottomans and also sought to incorporate parts of the Negev into their empire, and secondly in a period when the tribes in the northerly border regions increasingly gained power and threatened to secede.[4]

The Ottomans therefore sought to stabilize the border regions of their empire. One of the means to achieve this was the so-called "Tanzimat land reform," which sought to sedentarize the inhabitants of border areas by enforcing continuous farming of their lands.[5] The key Ottoman innovations were: (1) While in traditional Islamic law the permission of a tribal leader or the state was required to develop unused land and thus acquire it as productive land (" miri"),[6] the Land Code now even "rewarded" unauthorized land development:[7] land that had been made productive could be retroactively registered in the so-called "tapu registers" for a registration fee,[8] after which it automatically became something similar to the private property of the farmer (Gerber: "private for all practical purposes [...] though formally belonging to the state"[9]). (2) However, this land had to be continuously cultivated. If cultivation was neglected for more than three years, the owner risked losing the land. Although the state could not reclaim it and classify it again as mawat land (Tute: "once miri always miri"[10]), it could classify it as " mahlul" and demand that the owner pay the registration fee again. If he failed to do so, the state could auction off the land, but had itself "no power of resuming it."[11][12]

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By and large, the Tanzimat land reform can be considered a failure. The obligation to register land was "habitually and widely disregarded" throughout Palestine.[13] Furthermore, the structured registration of current land holdings by so-called "yoklama tapu commissions" took decades to commence and was apparently only carried out in a few districts, with only a limited number of ownership relationships being recorded.[14] "By the end of the Ottoman period, only 5% of the land in Palestine had been registered under the new registration system, while most if not all, Bedouin lands remained unregistered."[15]

Recently, several studies examined more closely how the Ottomans reacted to this failure. It emerged, firstly, that Bedouins were initially the primary victims. Secondly, it became clear that the Ottomans, more often than not, did not follow the laws they had introduced themselves. In present-day Jordan, for example, Bedouins were forcibly displaced regardless of their land use,[16] and lands they considered their tribal territory were instead given for free to sedentary Circassians.[17][18][19] Similarly, in northern Palestine, a large portion of the Jezreel Valley, including 20 villages, over which – as so-called mulk land, and thus privately owned – the Ottomans legally had no authority to dispose of, was sold to the wealthy Sursock family for a nominal price.[20] Coincidentally, Bedouins were victims in this case as well, since the Jezreel Valley was predominantly controlled by various smaller Bedouin tribes.[21]

In contrast, a recent PhD thesis on the Hebron area demonstrated how flexible the Ottomans could be in responding to the failure of their legal reform, when they wanted to. There, only individuals from six of the area's 50 villages registered their lands as private owners.[22] The inhabitants of the other villages, however, were not dispossessed. Instead, it was deemed acceptable for agricultural land to be registered collectively in the name of the entire village. Additionally, alongside tapu entries, "tax records, oral testimony, and sharia-court documents" were considered "sufficient to prove property tenure."[23] The Negev serves as a fourth example of the flexibility of Ottoman legal practice, and additionally as an example of a much more Bedouin-friendly policy toward the end of the Ottoman period. There, the first and only attempt to carry out structured land registrations with the help of a mixed commission of Ottomans and Bedouins was undertaken in 1891,[24] but it was soon abandoned due to the inability to enforce it, as there was a lack of Ottoman military presence in the south.[25][26] In response, a 1902 decision exempted Negev Bedouins from the requirement to register their lands. Instead, land ownership was governed "based on local custom and tradition."[27] Similarly, in Syria, as in the Negev, the Ottomans adopted a flexible approach: they were satisfied with the use of land as "mere" grazing land (rather than formally registered farmland) by tribespeople to recognize it as their tribal territory.[28]

Alongside the aforementioned decision, several factors demonstrate that the Ottomans did not consider the Negev as mawat, but rather regarded it as Bedouin land even without formal registration: (1) the Ottomans continued to levy land tax on Bedouin agricultural land,[29] (2) they purchased land from Bedouins to establish the city of Beersheba,[30] (3) similarly, Zionists had to buy their land in the Negev from Bedouins;[31] (4) Ottoman officials repeatedly resolved Bedouin land ownership disputes in the Negev.[31][32]

Mandatory Palestine

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After the Mandate for Palestine came into effect in 1920 the territory came under the administration of the colonial British regime. The British High Commissioner Herbert Samuel, "alarm[ed] over the apparent 'loss' of land to peasant farmers bringing seemingly unoccupied land under cultivation,"[33] which he had intended for Zionist immigrants,[34] set about the task of reorganizing land ownership in Palestine. Particularly through two decrees, Palestinians were deprived of rights that had been granted to them by the Ottoman Land Code: The "Mawat Land Ordinance" of 1921 stripped them of the right to develop mawat land without prior approval from the state authorities.[35][36] Similarly, the "Mahlul Land Ordinance" of 1920 restricted the rights of heirs to miri land and of squatters on miri land not claimed by heirs (="mahlul"), which, during Ottoman times, could be acquired in a similar way to mawat land.[37][38][39]

The 1921 law was an important turning point in defining the legal concept of mawat lands. Until then the mawat classification was for lands of marginal agricultural importance located outside the main areas of settlement. The possibility to gain title by cultivation that existed under the Land Code had encouraged improvement and the enlargement of settlements in sparsely populated areas.[40] The 1946 Survey of Palestine by John Valentine Wistar Shaw described the change from mawat lands: "Nowadays, the development of 'waste' land without prior leave from the State is legally a trespass." The only way to gain title to the mawat (and mahlul) lands after 1921 was "allocation from the State."[41]

In the 1920s, mawat and mahlul lands became central instruments for the British to transfer land from Palestinians to incoming Zionist settlers. Under the Ottomans, Sultan Abdul Hamid still had to use his private funds to purchase land specifically to settle Bedouins,[42] as mawat lands were public lands, and Ottoman law prevented the state from freely disposing of mahlul lands (see above). In contrast, the British reinterpreted mawat, mahlul, and even miri lands as akin to "crown land"[43] and leased them at their discretion: despite Jews making up only a little over 17% of the population by the late 1920s, by 1943 — after the British had already begun to scale back their land redistribution policies[44] due to the growing issue of Palestinian landlessness[45] — nearly 73.5% of state lands leased by the British went to Jews (with 98.6% of that under long-term leases and only 1.4% under short-term leases), while only 26.5% went to Arabs (of which 1.9% were long-term leases and 98.1% were short-term leases).[46]

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Registered state lands as of 1947.
The map marks only five areas in the Negev as state lands, all purchased during the Ottoman period.
With note: "There are, particularly in the southern desert [...], [additional] lands – not coloured on this map – which will no doubt be found at land settlement to be public land."
In the Survey of Palestine, low British estimates[47] excluded around 200,000 ha of Negev lands "cultivated from time to time" from this possibly public land. The remainder was thought to be probably "either mewat or empty miri land."[48]

Despite these legal changes, their practical implementation faced significant challenges. Although the two decrees were designed and suitable to dispossess Palestinians quickly, they were "practically never" applied.[49][50] Key reasons for the failure of these legal innovations included strong resistance from the Palestinian population,[51] and more critically, the British, lacking knowledge of land ownership due to the previous failure of Ottoman land registrations, faced further difficulties when outraged Palestinians refused to cooperate with the newly established registration commission.[52] As a result, the commission struggled to gather necessary information. The Bedouin-held lands in the Negev were still entirely unregistered when Palestine was partitioned in 1948; the only registered lands in the Negev during the British Mandate were some 10,000 ha purchased by Jewish settlers from the Bedouins[53] and some 6,400 ha in Arab possession.[54][55] Furthermore, even after identifying lands that were potentially to be classified as mawat or mahlul, the new regulations still required prove that they had not been cultivated for three years. This evidence was often undermined by Palestinians, who, likely due to "gentleman agreements," frequently testified to the contrary.[56]

External image
image icon Affirmation "not to interfere with the special rights and customs of the Bedouin Tribes of Beersheba", given during the British land registration process.[57]

More relevant specifically to the Negev is that, although attempts were made to analyze which lands could be classified as mawat, the British — who were determined not to cede the Negev to the Zionists[58] — adopted the Ottoman position, according to which traditional Bedouin land laws prevailed in the Negev. Accordingly, they declared that the Bedouins' "special rights and customs" were not affected by the aforementioned new ordinances.[59][60][61][62] A year later, Article 45 of the Palestine Order in Council[63] confirmed the Tribal Court of the Bedouins, which had already been established by the Ottomans and regulated matters in the Beersheba district according to Bedouin Tribal Law.[64] In a 1929 court ruling,[65] it was further affirmed that this court had jurisdiction over cases involving land in Beersheba that was not formally registered.[66] On this note, the 1931 Palestine Census also stated:

In a strict sense most of the land [in the Negev] may be described as mewat, not having been assigned or disposed of by deed. Nevertheless, the 'privileges' of the nomads have been confirmed from time to time, and it is, undoubtedly, part of the 'customary' law, as opposed to formal law, to recognize the nomadic traditional cultivation in this area as a normal assignment.

— Census of Palestine 1931, 1933[67]

Additionally, the British built on the fact that the Ottoman Land Code provided for the possibility that "vacant land [...], such as mountains, rocky places, [...] grazing grounds, which are [...] assigned ab antiquo to the use of the inhabitants of a town or village" should not be considered mawat.[68] On this basis, the British District Officer of Beersheba considered the uncultivated land in his district in 1926 as "Metruka for pasture by custom";[69] the British also prohibited Zionist land purchases in the Negev, stating that "the cultivable land in the Beersheba sub-district is regarded as belonging to the Bedouin tribes by virtue of possession from time immemorial".[70]

Israel

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The British never completed their surveys of the Negev and for various reasons most of the mawat lands were still unregistered when the State of Israel was established. The mawat lands became property of the state under Israeli law which continued to administer the land under the pre-existing laws.[71]

The Israeli state considers all the lands of the Negev Bedouins mawat (dead lands) belonging to the Jewish state.[53] After the 1947–1949 Palestine war, the administration of the mawat lands passed to the Israel Land Administration. The few Bedouin remaining in the Negev after the 1947–1949 Palestine war were transferred to a small region of the Negev under military rule known as the Siyag.[2][71]

When land registrations continued in the Negev in the 1970s it was under modified principles of land settlement. The matter dragged on for several decades with compensation offered in lieu of registering the lands of Bedouin claimants.[53]

The Israeli state began submitting counterclaims against Bedouin claimants in 2004. The modern State practice of claiming Bedouin lands as mawat is sometimes called the "Dead Negev Doctrine".[53]

Israeli courts have consistently upheld the applicability of mawat land doctrine in these disputes. A 2012 Israeli District Court decision registered the Araqib (Araqeeb, Araquib) lands as state property. The Bedouin al-Uqbi tribe appealed the decision but the Beersheba District Court ruled against them. The court ruled that the disputed Araquib lands were mawat (dead lands) and should be registered as state property.[72]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ The Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law. Oxford University Press. 2014. p. 859. ISBN 9780198725220.
  2. ^ a b The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism. Oxford University Press. 2016. p. 410-12. ISBN 9781349576906.
  3. ^ Kasaba, Reşat (2009). A Moveable Empire: Ottoman Nomads, Migrants & Refugees. Seattle/London: University of Washington Press. pp. 42–43.
  4. ^ Kasaba, Reşat (2009). A Moveable Empire: Ottoman Nomads, Migrants & Refugees. Seattle/London: University of Washington Press. pp. 86–87.
  5. ^ Kram, Noa (2013). Clashes over Recognition: The Struggle of Indigenous Bedouins for Land Ownership Rights under Israeli Law (Thesis). San Francisco: California Institute of Integral Studies. pp. 10 f. ProQuest 1357148466.
  6. ^ Cf. Goadby, Frederic M.; Doukhan, Moses J. (1935). The Land Law of Palestine. Tel-Aviv. p. 45.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  7. ^ Fakher Eldin, Munir (2008). Communities of Owners: Land Law, Governance, and Politics in Palestine, 1858-1948 (Thesis). New York University. p. 21. ProQuest 304527298.
  8. ^ For more details on the registration process in the Jerusalem area, where the process was comparatively regular, see Gerber, Haim. Ottoman Rule in Jerusalem, 1890–1914. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag. pp. 202–206.
  9. ^ Gerber, Haim. Ottoman Rule in Jerusalem, 1890–1914. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag. p. 216.
  10. ^ Tute, R. C. (1927). The Ottoman Land Laws. With a Commentary on the Ottoman Land Code of 7th Ramadan 1274 (PDF). Greek Conv. Press. p. 10.
  11. ^ Tute, Justice (1927). "The Law of State Lands in Palestine". Journal of Comparative Legislation and International Law. 9 (4): 174.
  12. ^ Cf. also Goadby, Frederic M.; Doukhan, Moses J. (1935). The Land Law of Palestine. Tel-Aviv. p. 26.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  13. ^ Tute, Justice (1929). "The Registration of Land in Palestine". Journal of Comparative Legislation and International Law. 11 (1): 51.
  14. ^ McElrone, Susynne (2016). From the Pages of the Defter: A Social History of Rural Property Tenure and the Implementation of Tanzimat Land Reform in Hebron, Palestine (1858-1900) (PhD thesis). New York University. pp. 57–67.
  15. ^ Amara, Ahmad; Yiftachel, Oren (2014). Confrontation in the Negev. Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung. p. 14.
  16. ^ Granott, A. (1952). The Land System in Palestine: History and Structure. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode. p. 94.
  17. ^ Shami, Seteney (1994). "Displacement, Historical Memory, and Identity: The Circassians in Jordan". Center for Migration Studies Special Issue. 11 (4): 195. doi:10.1111/j.2050-411X.1994.tb00807.x.
  18. ^ Kazzaz, Gizem (2021). A Glimpse into the World of Muhajirs: Circassians in Ottoman Syria (1864-1910) (PDF) (Master's thesis). p. 56 f., 61–67.
  19. ^ Barakat, Nora E. (2023). Bedouin Bureaucrats: Mobility and Property in the Ottoman Empire. Stanford University Press. p. 165 f.
  20. ^ Granott, A. (1952). The Land System in Palestine: History and Structure. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode. p. 80.. For many more examples along these lines, cf. ibid. pp. 78–84.
  21. ^ Falah, Ghazi (1990). "The Evolution of Semi-nomadism in Non-desert Environment: The Case of Galilee in the 19th Century". GeoJournal. 21 (4): 402–403.
  22. ^ Cf. also Nadan, Amos (2021). "The route from informal peasant landownership to formal tenancy and eviction in Palestine, 1800s-1947". Continuity and Change. 36 (2): 240.
  23. ^ McElrone, Susynne (2016). From the Pages of the Defter: A Social History of Rural Property Tenure and the Implementation of Tanzimat Land Reform in Hebron, Palestine (1858-1900) (PhD thesis). New York University. p. 249.
  24. ^ Cf. Amara, Ahmad (2016). Governing Property: The Politics of Ottoman Land Law and State-Making in Southern Palestine, 1850-1917 (Thesis). New York University. pp. 128 f. ProQuest 1820076414.
  25. ^ Amara, Ahmad (2016). Governing Property: The Politics of Ottoman Land Law and State-Making in Southern Palestine, 1850-1917 (Thesis). New York University. p. 216. ProQuest 1820076414.
  26. ^ On this lack of military presence, cf. also Bailey, Clinton (1990). "The Ottomans and the Bedouin Tribes of the Negev". In Gad G. Gilbar (ed.). Palestine 1800–1914. Studies in Economic and Social History. E.J. Brill. pp. 322–325. Cf. also p. 332: "In sum, Ottoman rule was barely effective in the nineteenth-century Negev. As a result, the Bedouin there lived an autonomous, if not independent, existence, pursuing their lives and wars with little interference. Without sufficient manpower and weaponry at government disposal, it could hardly have been different."
  27. ^ BOA. DH.MKT 120/20, apud Amara, Ahmad (2021). "The Ottoman Tanzimat in the Palestinian Frontier of Beersheba (1850–1917)". In Burhan Çağlar (ed.). Living in the Ottoman Lands: Identities, Administration and Warfare. Kronik. p. 136.
  28. ^ Velud, Christian (2000). "French Mandate policy in the Syrian steppe". In Mundy, Marthy; Musallam, Basim (eds.). The Transformation of Nomadic Society in the Arab East. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 74. ISBN 9780521770576.
  29. ^ Nasasra, Mansour (2015). "Ruling the Desert: Ottoman and British Policies towards the Bedouin of the Naqab and Transjordan Region, 1900–1948". British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. Vol. 42. p. 267.
  30. ^ Fields, Gary (2017). Enclosure: Palestinian Landscapes in a Historical Mirror. University of California Press. pp. 269 f.
  31. ^ a b Yiftachel, Oren (2012). "'Terra nullius' and planning: Land, law and identity in Israel/Palestine". In Bhan, Gautam (ed.). The Routledge Companion to Planning in the Global South. Routledge. p. 246 f.
  32. ^ Amara, Ahmad (2013). "The Negev Land Question: Between Denial and Recognition". Journal of Palestine Studies. 42 (3): 34.
  33. ^ Bunton, Martin (2007). Colonial Land Policies in Palestine 1917-1936. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 43.
  34. ^ Huneidi, Sahar (2001). A Broken Trust: Herbert Samuel, Zionism and the Palestinians, 1920-1925. Foreword by Waldi Khalidi. London/New York: I.B. Tauris. pp. 212–213.
  35. ^ Cf. Mogannam, Mogannam E. "Palestine Legislation under the British". The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 164: 51.
  36. ^ Abu-Rabia, Aref (1994). Negev Bedouin and Livestock Rearing: Social, Economic and Political Aspects. Routledge. ISBN 9780367717032.
  37. ^ Cf. Tute, R. C. (1927). The Ottoman Land Laws. With a Commentary on the Ottoman Land Code of 7th Ramadan 1274 (PDF). Greek Conv. Press. pp. 64, 78.
  38. ^ Mogannam, Mogannam E. "Palestine Legislation under the British". The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 164: 51.
  39. ^ Cf. Stein, Kenneth W. (1987). The Land Question in Palestine, 1917-1939. UNC Press. ISBN 9780807841785.
  40. ^ Levine, Mark (2005). Overthrowing Geography: Jaffa, Tel Aviv, And the Struggle for Palestine 1880-1948. University of California Press. p. 185. ISBN 9780520243712.
  41. ^ A Survey of Palestine: Prepared in December 1945 and January 1946 for the Information of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, Volume 1 (PDF). p. 233.
  42. ^ Cf. Fischel, Roy S.; Kark, Ruth (2008). "Sultan Abdülhamid II and Palestine: Private lands and imperial policy". New Perspectives on Turkey. 39: 129–166.
  43. ^ Bunton, Martin (2007). Colonial Land Policies in Palestine, 1917–1936. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 43.
  44. ^ Tyler, Warwick P. N. (2001). State Lands and Rural Development in Mandatory Palestine, 1920-1948. Brighton/Portland: Sussex Academic Press. p. 28.
  45. ^ Cf. Anderson, Charles (2018). "The British Mandate and the crisis of Palestinian landlessness, 1929–1936". Middle Eastern Studies. 54 (2): 171–215. doi:10.1080/00263206.2017.1372427.
  46. ^ A Survey of Palestine: Prepared in December 1945 and January 1946 for the Information of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, Volume 1 (PDF). p. 267 f.
  47. ^ For higher estimates, cf. the British Abramson Report of 1921, apud Kedar, Alexandre; Ahmad Amara; Oren Yiftachel (2018). Emptied Lands. A Legal Geography of Bedouin Rights in the Negev. Stanford University Press. p. 130.: 280,000 ha;
    al-Aref, Aref (1999). The History of Beersheba and its Tribes (in Arabic). Maktabat Madbouli. p. 274.: 300,000 ha;
    Epstein, Eliahu (1939). "Bedouin of the Negeb". Palestine Exploration Quarterly. 71 (2): 70. doi:10.1179/peq.1939.71.2.59.: 350,000 ha;
    Hadawi, Sami (1970). Village Statistics 1945. A Classification of Land and Area Ownership in Palestine. With Explanatory Notes. Palestine Liberation Organization Research Center. p. 36.: 400,000 ha;
    Abu-Sitta, Salman H. (2010). Atlas of Palestine 1917–1966 (PDF). Palestine Land Society. p. 54.: 375,000–550,000 ha.
  48. ^ A Survey of Palestine: Prepared in December 1945 and January 1946 for the Information of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, Volume 1 (PDF). p. 257.. Cf. also p. 256: "It is frequently difficult to assume that there was in the past no grant, and consequently it is not safe to assume that all the empty lands south of Beersheba or east of Hebron, for instance, are mewat."
  49. ^ Bunton, Martin (2007). Colonial Land Policies in Palestine 1917-1936. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 48.
  50. ^ Cf. also Tyler, Warwick P. N. (2001). State Lands and Rural Development in Mandatory Palestine, 1920-1948. Brighton/Portland: Sussex Academic Press. p. 28.
  51. ^ Bunton, Martin (2007). Colonial Land Policies in Palestine 1917-1936. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 46.
  52. ^ Huneidi, Sahar (2001). A Broken Trust: Herbert Samuel, Zionism and the Palestinians, 1920-1925. Foreword by Waldi Khalidi. London/New York: I.B. Tauris. p. 216.
  53. ^ a b c d Kedar, Alexandre; Ahara, Ahmed; Yiftachel, Oren (2018). "1.4 The Dead Negev Doctrine in a Nutshell". Emptied Lands: A Legal Geography of Bedouin Rights in the Negev. Stanford University Press. ISBN 9781503604582.
  54. ^ Fischbach, Michael R. (2003). Records of Dispossession: Palestinian Refugee Property and the Arab-Israeli Conflict. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 260–261.
  55. ^ Senechal, Thierry J. (2008). "Valuation of Palestinian Refugee Losses: A Study Based on the National Wealth of Palestine in 1948" (PDF). p. 74.
  56. ^ Bunton, Martin (2007). Colonial Land Policies in Palestine 1917-1936. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 49–51.
  57. ^ Salman Abu Sitta. "Al-Araqib: All of Palestine". Retrieved 2024-05-11.
  58. ^ Oren, Michael (1989). "The diplomatic struggle for the Negev, 1946–1956". Studies in Zionism. Vol. 10. pp. 200 f.
  59. ^ Amara, Ahmad (2013). "The Negev Land Question: Between Denial and Recognition". Journal of Palestine Studies. 42 (3): 34.
  60. ^ Kedar, Alexandre; Ahmad Amara; Oren Yiftachel (2018). Emptied Lands. A Legal Geography of Bedouin Rights in the Negev. Stanford University Press. p. 75 f.
  61. ^ Cf. also Shepherd, Naomi (1999). Ploughing Sand: British Rule in Palestine, 1917–1948. John Murray. p. 102.
  62. ^ Cf. also Nasasra, Mansour (2015). "Ruling the Desert: Ottoman and British Policies towards the Bedouin of the Naqab and Transjordan Region, 1900–1948". British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. 42 (3): 268. based on an interview with Lord Oxford, Beersheba's assistant district commissioner in the 1940s: "British officials who served in Beersheba and Gaza, such as the late Lord Oxford, acknowledged Bedouin land ownership as the Bedouins themselves perceived it, according to their respected customs."
  63. ^ George V. (1922). "The Palestine Order in Council, 1922. Article 45". ecf.org.il. Retrieved 2024-05-23.
  64. ^ Cf. Birzeit University, Institute of Law (2006). Informal Justice: Rule of Law and Dispute Resolution in Palestine (PDF). Birzeit University, Institute of Law. p. 31.
  65. ^ McDonnell, Michael (1934). The Law Reports of Palestine. London: Waterlow & Sons. p. 458.
  66. ^ Cf. Stein, Kenneth W. (1987). The Land Question in Palestine, 1917-1939. Revised Edition. The University of North Carolina Press. pp. 60–61.
  67. ^ "Census of Palestine 1931. Volume I. Part I: Report" (PDF). p. 335. Retrieved 2024-05-23.
  68. ^ Article 103. Cited after Tute, R. C. (1927). The Ottoman Land Laws. With a Commentary on the Ottoman Land Code of 7th Ramadan 1274 (PDF). Greek Conv. Press. p. 97.
  69. ^ Kark, Ruth; Frantzman, Seth J. (2012). "The Negev: Land, Settlement, the Bedouin and Ottoman and British Policy 1871–1948". British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. 39 (1): 59.
  70. ^ Yiftachel, Oren (2012). ""Terra nullius" and planning: Land, law and identity in Israel/Palestine". In Bhan, Gautam (ed.). The Routledge Companion to Planning in the Global South. Routledge. p. 246 f.
  71. ^ a b Meir, Avinoam (2020). As Nomadism Ends: The Israeli Bedouin Of The Negev. Routledge. p. 177. ISBN 9780367160548.
  72. ^ Kedar, Alexandre; Ahara, Ahmed; Yiftachel, Oren (2018). "1.3 'Araquib: Challenging Legal Geography". Emptied Lands: A Legal Geography of Bedouin Rights in the Negev. Stanford University Press. ISBN 9781503604582.
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