actually many of them did simply buy the land. to start raising more funds for their quickly collapsing empire, the Ottomans changed their land laws and now required people to provide proof of ownership of land with a deed which could then be taxed. before this the custom was basically along the lines of "if you and your family have been working the land for years then its yours". now with the new Ottoman laws arab peasants were faced with a crisis. they could try and come up with the money to purchase the deeds themselves and then also to pay the taxes, or they could have wealthy arabs purchase the land and pay the taxes for them. many of them chose this route. it allowed them to remain on the land they and their families had worked for hundreds of years, but they made the mistake of assuming that they still owned the land. they didn't realize that the deeds were not in their names and that the wealthy arabs now had the right to do whatever they pleased with it. that was all well and good until jewish immigration began to spike. with the influx in immigrants seeking to live in palestine, naturally land prices went up. so what happened next was a natural phenomenon as well. wealthy people like to make their money work for them, and they like to become more wealthy. now knowing that land prices were on the rise and that jews immigrating with the aid of zionist organizations had the money to pay high prices for land, the wealthy arab land owners were inclined to sell at high profits. good for everyone involved right? wealthy arab gets more wealthy through a real estate investment, and jew gets land he wants to live on for whatever reason be it touristic, curiosity, some biblical prophecy, bullshit religious idealism, whatever. but who gets fucked? the arab peasant who assumed he was being done a favor by the arab aristocracy who had helped them out(or so they thought) by paying their land tax and holding the deed to the land. so the arab peasants were living according to old customs of land laws and the arab aristocracy actually knew what the implications of the new ottoman law were. the jew coming in was simply purchasing land. so whose fault is it really? the jew who came upon a situation and just bought land not knowing the circumstances surrounding land law changes, the wealthy arab who made a few bucks(shekles?) on a land purchase that meant nothing to them until the Jewish immigration drove up land prices, or the peasant who was ignorant of the land law change and simply decided to rely on custom? I'd point the finger at the wealthy arabs personally, but then again I wouldn't. its not their fault for wanting to make more money, and they don't have some duty to protect other arabs just because they're arabs too. so I'd say no one is at fault, just the poor getting fucked like always. but palestinians being fucked over by the arab aristocracy was nothing new and continued to be a very big trend, even until today. but somehow the finger never gets pointed at the wealthy arabs for "abandoning their brethren" it always goes back to the "racist, zionist, jew intent on plotting the destruction of the arabs". go figure. I'm not saying there weren't bad bad zionists, but I just wanted to clarify that there were in fact perfectly legal land transfers made between arab and jew that were also beneficial to both arab and jew.


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