>Land ownership has been hard for Palestinians to prove in Israeli courts. They are often represented by pro-bono lawyers while the Israeli state is represented by very well-compensated ones. But I have no reason to believe that B'Tselem's and Peace Now's estimates are incorrect. Do you? If so, say what the reason is instead of insinuating that they are dishonest.
This isn't how the Israeli legal system works, even in cases where they did prove purchase more often than not the "settlers" lose.
The burden is on the settlers not the Palestinians, and they lose over 80% of the cases mostly because the Israeli legal system actually prevents them from proving that the transaction was legal unless the Palestinian in question is no longer in the territories because it would not end up well for them as the punishment for selling land to Jews under PA law is death.
Israeli court cases and files are open to the public.
>Wikipedia is a bad source for anything having anything to do with Israel.
The Bias is rarely favoring Israel, and every source is cited. This is about the Israeli legal system, the laws are open to everyone to read.
>Haaretz disagrees with you
I can't access the article.
NVM google fixed it.
What happened here is quite different than what you are trying to present, I'm not sure if you read the article and done your research.
The absentee law (1950) was amended in 1951 and later 1970 and it cannot be used in E. Jerusalem, several cases were brought up during the years by the municipal authority when it claimed eminent domain over properties.
It seems that so far in those cases, and in this 2013 case the court held that that 1970 and 1951 amendments that prevent the absentee law of applying to E. Jerusalem stand.
> But you are talking about a different law. During the Ottoman period, land where in a way "leased" to families and if they stopped cultivating the land or abandoned it.
No we are talking about the same law, the Israeli legal system is a mish-mash of historic Ottoman and British laws that were in effect when the state was founded, bureaucracies tend to change their names but remain more or less constant.
That law has been superseded there is no longer a way inact imminent domain without compensation even in absentee cases.
The law was never enacted in the W. Bank, you are maybe confusing it with Jerusalem, Israeli law and through it the absentee law was never applied to the W. Bank only to E. Jerusalem and the Golan Heights through the Jerusalem Law, the the Golan Heights law respectively.
> It allowed it to confiscate land that had been left behind by refugees fleeing the Six-day war
I think you are confusing a few things, the closest thing I can think off is the Jordan Valley, when the Jordanian legiones retreated 100-150K civilian Arabs (at the time both them and the media called them Arabs, the term "Palestinians" weren't used by well the Palestinians until Arab League congress of 1969) fled to Jordan (they were holding Jordanian papers, as Jordan did annex the W. Bank fully), Jordan tried to send them back (sometimes by force), early on about 14,000 of them returned, 40-50,000 of them returned by the mid 70's the rest trickled over the years, mostly during the waves when Jordan retroactively taken away the citizenship from them, the last largest wave was after the 1993 peace accords with Jordan.
Overall you seem to have an idea that any Israeli can just go and claim stake to a land and the Palestinians have to prove their ownership, I don't know what gave you that impression but that's not how it works you are more than welcomed to review the court cases yourself, Google translate is pretty good at translating both Hebrew and common Arabic these days.
