Things at least as stark happened to palestinians, that's why there was established a state agency called Custodian of Absentee Property, to divvy out the loot among the immigrants ... there are many israeli quotes on this, it can hardly be hidden, being a matter of public record, passed by their legislature and debated at length in the papers ... there was decreed a particular date on which non-jewish people absent from their villages lost all legal rights to anything in the country ... a few tens of thousands of these were not far away, only in a neighbouring village for whatever reason, some were simply missed in the count of their own village ... they were called the 'present absent', and were all completely dispossessed
In a nice and legal fashion of course ... three quarters or more of Palestine was until then the property of muslim arabs, in some form, much of the area covered by various usufruct tenures, the right to pasture livestock, or grow olive trees, other fruit trees, etc .... and of course their homes, the keys to which they still carry, as a symbol |
