Absentee Property Law of 1950 legally barred expelled Palestinians from reclaiming property

Evidence

For example, after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, an anxiety took hold that the masses of Palestinians expelled and absented from their land would return and assert their citizenship rights as held under international law (Jefferis 2012). Therefore, the first Knesset enacted the Absentee Property Law of 1950, which defined “persons who were expelled, fled, or who left the country after 29 November 1947, mainly due to the war, as well as their movable and immovable property (mainly land, houses and bank accounts etc.), as ‘absentee’” (Adalah n.d.). This definition, in other words, ratified the legal definition of Palestinians outside the country, as “absentees” who have no right of ownership over their homes and their homeland, no citizenship or status, and hence, no right to return. — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 1003

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Colonial property law retroactively legalized forced seizures of waqf land — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 235; French law retroactively legalized settlers’ forcible seizure of Algerian waqf land; Religion functions as the enabling power behind a preferential legal system — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 1014 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• French law retroactively legalized settlers’ forcible seizure of Algerian waqf land #epitomizes (0.75)
• Colonial property law retroactively legalized forced seizures of waqf land #epitomizes (0.72) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 235