The Dispossession of the Peasantry (ص 45)

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عنوان

The Dispossession of the Peasantry (ص 45)

المحتوى

29
debt over selling it when no regular or permanent alternative source of income was
available; his land would at least provide some subsistence goods. This is a good
example of the use of neoclassical theory that concentrates on individual decision
making, which could be useful in certain select instances, but which ignore or
dismiss the overall context and processes in which individuals make their decisions.
Metzer addresses the unavoidable issue of evicted Arab tenants as a result
of the acquisition of land by Jewish European settlers and calculates an “upper-
bound estimate” of 8,000 tenant households (16,000 tenant workers) or about 9
percent of the total Arab labor force in 1931 for the period 1921-1947.*° Metzer
compares his estimate to one by Kamen” of 8,200 displaced households of
tenants and owner-cultivators. Since Kamen included owner-cultivators in his
estimate, Metzer argues, his estimate is actually higher than Kamen’s.*° However,
what Metzer fails to point out is that Kamen’s estimate was for 1930-1945 only.
Given that by 1930, settler acquisition of land amounted to about 60 percent of
their total acquisitions and the well-known fact that most of the tenant-cultivated
land was sold prior to 1930 (including the pre-Mandate period), the number of
evicted tenants may be much higher, although lack of data does not permit a
precise quantification of their numbers. At any rate, what is equally important
. 8Ibid., 93.
“Charles S. Kamen, Little Common Ground: Arab Agriculture and Jewish
Settlement in Palestine, 1920-1948 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press,
1991), Table 8, 156.
Metzer, Divided Economy, 93.
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The Dispossession of the Peasantry

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المنشئ

Riyad Mousa

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