LVT in the wider context

It is nearly two months since anything new has been added to the Campaign website. There has been little in the news that it would have been appropriate to respond to. Bigger events have moved onto centre stage, including the takeover of large areas of Iraq by Islamists, the associated massacres that have accompanied that, the war in Gaza and unfolding events in Ukraine. Our supporters will have divergent views on  these conflicts, but all of them are, amongst other things, battles for control of land and natural resources. The Iraq conflict is in and around the area of the oil fields, whilst Ukraine is a source of valuable coal which is exported to, amongst other places, the UK.

Gaza and Palestine generally are another matter. Proposals have been put forward from time to time for solutions which would involve rent-sharing, for example by Fred Foldvary. Land ownership in Israel/Palestine is a complex topic in itself. At the end of the Ottoman period, the major landowners were the Greek Orthodox Church and absentees, letting to rack-rented tenants. The GOC has retained its land holdings and even the Israeli parliament building is on leased land. The absentees sold to the Jewish National Fund which then leased it to Jewish settlers, though until the Nazis came to power in the 1930s their numbers were small, the influx was a trickle and it seemed unlikely that there would ever be enough Jews to make it possible to establish a Jewish state. Most of the absentee landlowners lost their property in the 1948 war.

It is interesting to speculate what might happen if the Israelis were suddenly to depart, leaving the country vacant but in good order. The grandchildren of the pre-1948 owners might emerge; on what basis could they make their claims? Documents would have to be produced, not only relating to land titles but also to inheritance. Courts would have to be set up to deal with it all. What assumptions would or could they make regarding the inheritance over two generations of property which had been thought lost for all time?