British Mandate: A Survey of Palestine: Volume I - Page 256

CHAPTER VIII.

grant to lapse and the usufruct (tasarrufl to return to the State. In actual practice there is in Palestine little of this land (miri mahlul) which becomes part of the public domain by escheatment in this way; there is some Government land which was handed on as State Domain from the Turkish regime, as mahlul , but the circumstances in which it became mahlul are doubtful, and it appears that the expression mahlul may be used for any vacant public domain of the niiri category. ~L1o avoid confusion, it is better to refer to all vacant public domain of this nature as unassigned State land.

76. Among the public domain of the miri category are the lands which the Ottoman Government took over from the Sultan Abdul Hamid after the revolution of 1908; these in turn were taken over by the Palestine Government. They are called jiftlik or mudawwara. Practically all of them were and are occupied to some' extent by Arabs who claim rights based on many years presence on them.

77. Land which has not been granted or assigned to anyone and is consequently unregistered and which is distant from cultivation or habitation is called mewat i.e. dead land. The mewat lands are part of the public domain. When such lands are. during the course of operations of land settlement, found to be free from any private rights, they are registered as rniri in the name of Government. It is frequently difficult to assume that there was in the past no grant, and consequently it is not safe to assume that all the empty lands south of Beersheba or east of Hebron, for instance, are mewat.

78. Under the Forest Ordinance * forest lands, which are not private property, can be proclaimed by the High Commissioner as forest reserves. On the assumption that there is no private property within these lands, and it has pot been possible to make this assumption with complete certainty, they may be regarded as part of the miri or mewat lands of the State. When they come under the operations of the Land (Settlement of Title) -Ordinance ** all these doubts are decided.

79. Another category of laud described in section 1 of this chapter is that of matruka. This is common or communal land which is left for the general use of the public, or which is assigned for the inhabitants generally of some village or group of villages. The control of the Government over these lands is limited to that necessary to enable the public to benefit from them in the
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* Drayton, Vol. I, page 710 . ** Drayton, Vol. I, page 838.

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