The Dispossession of the Peasantry (ص 47)

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The Dispossession of the Peasantry (ص 47)

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31
fragmentation of smallholdings over the years.”
What Metzer does here is skirt around the effects of Jewish European acquisitions
in reducing the average size of the Arab holding, and at the same time exempts
them from any role in the changes in the size distribution of holdings. In other
words, Metzer’s methodology of observable linear causation and ideological
predisposition makes him avoid or not allow him to see the role Jewish European
acquisitions played in the intensification of the commoditization of land in the
context of the overall increase in market relations. This is not to deny the role and
impact of the structure of Palestinian rural society and its internal dynamics in the
process of changing property relations. It is rather to assert that that process is best
seen through the intertwined impact of several factors.
The differences between the two economies are then dealt with in Metzer’s
discussion of capital accumulation. “Fixed assets were accumulated and retained
largely within the separate ‘economic confines’ of the Arab and Jewish
communities.”** In addition, the Jewish economy showed much higher rates of
accumulation and investment than the Arab economy such that by 1947 the
former’s share in the “total fixed reproducible capital” grew to about 52 percent as
compared to 17 percent in 1922. The Arab economy’s share fell from 76 percent in
1922 to 38 percent in 1947. The share of total investment for 1922-1947 was 60
percent for the Jewish economy, 29 percent for the Arab economy, and the
3Ibid., 98-9.
“Tbid., 103.
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The Dispossession of the Peasantry

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المنشئ

Riyad Mousa

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