Atlas of Palestine: Land Theft by the Jewish National Fund

Salman Abu-Sitta has spent a good seven decades investigating and then preserving the knowledge of what Palestine was prior to the 1948 Nakba.  His initial forensics were cartographic only, starting with the records of the London-based Palestine Exploration Fund, which was established back in 1865.  He still contributes to this ongoing project, based in Greenwich and gives talks at the British Museum.  But early on, Salman alerted others that the early mapping was a half-metre off!

Going beyond strictly focusing on maps, he included demographics and, prior to the Jewish State’s colonial capture of Palestine, he’s learned the identities of Palestinian families who lived in seemingly any dunam, a quarter-acre.

Abu-Sitta, a Gulf-based engineer by profession, has offered all his side research online from the Palestine Land Society and concludes that, 87 percent of the land from which Nakba-victims were excluded is still not lived on.  By coincidence, at least 13 percent of Israel was owned by the Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael, better known as the Jewish National Fund.  But the latest research shows that that mass has grown to 20 percent, and the JNF’s appetite is still not sated.

Of course, hundreds of villages were destroyed then and since, some planted over with foreign forestry of over 80 parks, which struggle to survive in the Levant climate.  But the settlement of Israel could accommodate Palestinians, if their internationally legal ‘Right of Return’ was allowed.

READ: JNF allocates $1m to young Israel settlers seen attacking Palestinians

The first published edition was in 2004, Atlas of Palestine: 1948, charting the British Mandate years up to the UK’s escape, which also ran over 400 pages.   A separate Atlas in 2010, running almost to 700 pages, focused strictly on the 1917-1966 period, with an Arabic version published a year later.  In 2020, Abu-Sitta published an Atlas for 1871-1877, running an amazing 600 pages.  

The latest version cartographically unpacks the land grab by the Jewish National Fund, created by Theodor Herzl in 1901 and started collecting international funds in order to buy Palestinian land, exclusively for Jewish residence and use.  

Besides pages of coloured map detail, there are statistical charts, showing the Jewish financing of the still ongoing occupation of dunams, strictly for the state’s First Class citizens.   The Jewish National Fund, a de facto part of the Israeli government, is amazingly, registered in and recognised by many Western countries as a charity, although that status was recently withdrawn in Canada.  

Also included is a history of how the JNF has seized property, restricted land transactions to Jews from anywhere, even if they are not Israelis.  This 450 page reference work is, like the other Palestine Land Society’s amazing volumes, available as a PDF download.  From plands.org – it’s free, as Palestine will someday be, from the river to the sea.

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