The Dispossession of the Peasantry (ص 170)

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The Dispossession of the Peasantry (ص 170)

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154
families would be insignificant as argued above. Finally, my use of the term
landless peasants is not to be understood in a literal sense of absolutely not owned
any land. They owned the land on which their houses were built. They did not own
other land that they could cultivate and which would be one of the sources for their
subsistence. I will deal with this issue in more detail in the chapter on the
differentiation of the peasantry.
My argument and conclusion are borne out by additional data in the Census
of Palestine, 1931. The census enumerated a total of 121,516 earners/families of
Palestinian Arabs engaged in pasture and agriculture. Of these, 29,957 were
agricultural laborers, representing about 25 percent of the total.”® This does not
include other categories listed in the census such as shepherds and fishermen. The
significance of the census for our argument is that it also enumerated what was
classified as “partly agriculturists” for each category of occupation that, in our
case, meant that these people were engaged in a “subsidiary occupation” to
“augment their means of subsistence,””
namely, as “ordinary cultivators” or as
receivers of “income from rent of agricultural land.” Of the 29,957 classified
as agricultural laborers, only 331 were also included in the “partly agriculturists”
category. In other words, only 331 earners were owners or cultivators of land but
Government of Palestine, Census of Palestine, 1931, vol. Il (Jerusalem:
Government Printer, 1931), Table XVI, 282-3; the numbers exclude nomads but
includes “others” whose numbers are insignificant.
*Ibid., 281.
Tbid.
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The Dispossession of the Peasantry

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المنشئ

Riyad Mousa

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