The Dispossession of the Peasantry (ص 178)

غرض

عنوان

The Dispossession of the Peasantry (ص 178)

المحتوى

162
tax burden. On the other hand, it issued the Commutation of the Tithe Ordinance
in 1928, which meant that the tithe was now a fixed annual amount based on the
average yield of previous years when prices were higher and output greater than
many of the following years. In addition, the Mandate government stipulated that
the tithe be paid in cash. In years of bad harvests and low prices, these two
measures proved calamitous for peasants as they now had to give up a greater
portion of their product to pay taxes, and to revert to increased borrowing from
and thus more dependent on moneylenders. Prices did not reach the 1924-1927
level, which were the basis for the commuted tithe, until 1941. Another difference
that increased the tax burden during the Mandate as compared with the Ottoman
period was the more effective system of administration of the former that also
entailed better enforcement. It was also found that the incidence of taxes was
proportionally unequal and favored urban over rural areas and Jewish European
farmers over Palestinian Arab peasants, regardless of intent.
The increase in the tax burden deriving from government policy in
conjunction with years of bad harvests and low prices under the new conditions of
the Mandate gave debt a qualitative difference from the Ottoman period. While it
is true that some peasants lost their “legal” rights to land during Ottoman times,
many of them did not lose access to land, except primarily for those who were
evicted when land was acquired by European settlers in the cases where the latter
did not employ them as wage laborers. The market for land was still limited, and
when a peasant lost ownership because of debt, it was in the interest of the
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The Dispossession of the Peasantry

تاريخ

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المنشئ

Riyad Mousa

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