From the Pages of the Defter (ص 41)

غرض

عنوان
From the Pages of the Defter (ص 41)
المحتوى
It has been argued here that the dominant paradigm regarding the implementation
of land reform in Palestine, presented through this selection of representative works, has
not — and cannot — offer substantiating proof of its claims regarding the degree to which the
population did not conform to reform. It has been shown that the argument’s currency has
been earned through historiographical repetition. A further point to note is that the
paradigm is universal. As Lorenzo Kamel’s footnote above indicates, the paradigm has not
allowed for the possibility of regional differences which can reasonably have been expected
to have occurred in Palestine, as elsewhere.
The study now on your screen or in your hands does not do a lot of things. First, it
does not argue that there were not villagers suspicious of reform. Second, in the absence of
evidence, | do not argue one way or the other about unscrupulous clerks and heartless
mukhtars and shaykhs. Undoubtedly there were some. There were also families who
registered enormous tracts of land. Farid al-Salim has noted, for example, that Mustafa
Barqawl registered 7,000 dunams in Ghabat Shufah and the ‘Abd al-Hadis registered 60,000
dunams in al-Sha‘rawiyya al-Gharbiyya north of Tulkarm. On the other hand, Yusuf Jarrar is
said to have brandished his sword to the tapu official and said, “This is my tapu”. By the end
of the nineteenth century, his family had apparently lost most of their lands.*? What do
these numbers and this story mean? They raise more questions than answers. The numbers
*” Al-Salim, 102.
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هو جزء من
From the Pages of the Defter
تاريخ
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المنشئ
Susynne McElrone

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