In 1950, Israel’s Absentees’ Property Law came into effect enabling Israel to confiscate vast tracts of land and thousands of properties belonging to Palestinians who fled or were forcibly expelled during the 1948 War, also referred to as the Nakba. The law was applied retroactively, seizing assets from any Palestinian resident who left his or her property from November 29, 1947, onward (see How Israel Applies the Absentees’ Property Law to Confiscate Palestinian Property in Jerusalem).

After Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, unilaterally tripled its size, and illegally extended its law and jurisdiction over it, the state added a series of amendments to the Absentees’ Property Law throughout the 1970s that were designed to invalidate Palestinian ownership, even if the owners remained present, and facilitate the transfer of Palestinian properties to Jewish owners.

Jerusalem Story sat down with Suhad Bishara, director of the Land and Planning Rights Unit at Adalah—The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, to learn more about how Israel’s Absentees’ Property Law and its amendments work together to deprive Palestinians—whether present or absent—of their property rights while benefiting Jews.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Jerusalem Story (JS): What are the differences between the Absentees’ Property Law (1950), and its 1970 amendment, the Legal and Administrative Procedures Law?

Suhad Bishara (SB): It’s important to note that the Absentees’ Property Law is applied in East Jerusalem by force of the illegal annexation [of unilaterally expanded East Jerusalem] that took place after the occupation in 1967 and the application of Israeli law that resulted from the act of annexation. So, annexation expanded the scope of the Absentees’ Property Law’s applicability, making a new geographic space subject to its application and further seizure and expropriation of Palestinian land.

The Absentees’ Property Law was enacted in March 1950, and it was one of the pieces of legislation through which Israeli state authorities seized properties belonging to Palestinian refugees, but not only Palestinian refugees, also some of the internally displaced Palestinians who later became Israeli citizens after the state’s establishment.

These properties were then sold to the Development Authority that was established under Israeli law in 1953. This meant they were permanently [and irrevocably] seized from the perspective of the Israeli authorities and Israeli law. Before 1967, Palestinians in Arab Jerusalem were considered, under the Absentees’ Property Law, to be “absentees” in relation to their properties in Israel. After 1967, once the government decided to grant them the status of Israeli permanent residents, they could be, under the definitions of the law, living in East Jerusalem on their own property and considered as an absentee on their own property. So we’re talking about a very broad and sweeping definition of an absentee and absentee property.

However, the Absentees’ Property Law was not applied to Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem vis-à-vis their properties in East Jerusalem. And this was the result of the Legal and Administrative Procedures Law of 1970, which addressed certain legal arrangements made in the aftermath of the annexation, including the status of the Palestinian properties in the annexed area under the Absentees’ Property Law. So, the Legal and Administrative Procedures Law provides that residents of East Jerusalem would not be considered absentees under the Absentees’ Property Law with respect to property located within the annexed area.

JS: How do the Absentees’ Property Law and its 1970 amendment work together to strip Palestinians of their property rights?

SB: The 1970 Legal and Administrative Procedures Law also stipulated a procedure for the obligatory release of properties in the annexed area to their prior Jewish owners. We are talking about predominantly Jewish individuals or Jewish-owned or -controlled entities who had left East Jerusalem in 1948, leaving behind properties that were then administered by the Jordanian Custodian of Enemy Property from 1948 until Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967.

Under this 1970 law, there is the General Custodian who has an obligation to release these properties to their pre-1948 owners. Now, this raises the question of the corresponding release of absentee property located in what is today West Jerusalem owned by Palestinians living in East Jerusalem who also lost their properties under the Absentees’ Property Law because of the 1948 geopolitical changes [i.e., they temporarily relocated or were forced to leave the area of Jerusalem that Israel conquered and integrated into its state in 1948–49, but remain in East Jerusalem today].

So, the law said there is an obligation to release de facto Jewish properties back to their Jewish owners who left the annexed area in 1948, but they did not want to do the same with Palestinians who were considered absentees vis-à-vis their properties in West Jerusalem. To resolve this issue and to prevent Palestinians from filing claims for their properties in West Jerusalem, the Israeli Knesset [parliament] enacted the Absentees’ Property Compensation Law in 1973, which abolishes any right to take legal action against the Custodian of Absentee Property to reclaim property. You can only claim monetary compensation, but you cannot restitute your property.

You can’t read the 1970 law without this 1973 amendment as they complement each other, and the aim is to not allow any Palestinian properties to be released from Jewish hands back to Palestinian ones.

JS: What are the roles of the different custodians managing these assets under the 1950 law and its amendments?

SB: One takes properties from Palestinians [who are “absent” according to the law]; the other releases properties [from Palestinians who remain] for Jewish individuals, companies, and so on. The Custodian for Absentee Property implements the Absentees’ Property Law seizing Palestinian property. And you have the General Custodian who was assigned under the 1970 Legal and Administrative Procedures Law to release Jewish properties that were held by the Jordanian Custodian of Enemy Property until the Israeli occupation in 1967.