Israel secretly buying property from Palestinian landowners

Increasing numbers of Palestinian landowners are accepting monetary compensation for land and properties they owned inside the Green Line, which stakes out territories claimed by the Israeli state, community leaders in the areas have warned.

Active groups of land dealers and lawyers have been implementing the Israeli regime’s plan to convince the displaced Palestinian landowners to accept compensation deals and give up their rights to their lands and properties.

“The active land dealers and lawyers work under direct auspices of the Israeli government which originally put the plan,” said Sulaiman Al Fahmawi, the Secretary General of the Displaced Union in Israel in a warning statement. “The Israeli government is struggling to convince landowners who were displaced from their villages and towns during the 1948 Nakba [‘Catastrophe’ under which the Israeli regime was established in Palestine] to give up their land and properties in return for monetary compensation.”

Land dealers and lawyers who work for the Israeli government have been targeting Palestinian landowners not only inside Israel but also in the West Bank and around the world.

Abu Samir, a Palestinian resident of Azun, between the West Bank cities of Nablus and Qalqilia, told Gulf News that he had been informed by his brother who lives in Amman that an Italian bank in the Jordanian capital was ready to pay him, his brother and their two other sisters a total of 8 million Jordanian dinars (Dh41.33 million) in return for the land of their deceased father. The family’s 40 donums of land located near Kfar Saba in Israel is registered in the name of the siblings’ father and the bank was ready to buy from anyone willing to give up his or her right to the land.
 [gulfnews.com]
21/3/16