British Mandate: A Survey of Palestine: Volume I - Page 291

CHAPTER VIII.

(b) It provides that a "statutory tenant" who has occupied and cultivated a holding for a period of not less than one year shall not, provided that he has paid his rent and that he had not grossly neglected his holding, be ejected therefrom unless he has been provided with a subsistence area approved by the High Commissioner. Such subsistence area is to be, as far as possible in the vicinity of the land from which he has been displaced.

(c) The Ordinance also provides for the protection of the rights of persons who have exercised on land the practice of grazing or watering animals, or cutting wood or reeds, unless provision of equivalent value is secured towards their livelihood; provided that such persons have exercised the practice concerned, by themselves or their agents, habitually, at the appropriate seasons, for not Jess than five consecutive years within a period of not more than seven years prior to the date when any application is made to a court for their eviction.

(d) The constitution of Boards to decide certain questions which might arise between landlords and tenants and for the determination of subsistence areas is provided for.

(e) The High Commissioner is empowered to appoint one or more Commissions consisting of not less than two persons to decide disputes on the following matters :-

(1) as to whether any person is a statutory tenant of a balding; or

(2) as to the length of time that any statutory tenant has occupied and cultivated a holding; or

(3) as to whether any person is the landlord of a holding; or (4) as to whether any person has exercised continuously any practice of grazing or watering animals or cutting wood or reeds or other beneficial occupation of a similar character by right, custom, usage or sufferance.

These Commissions have consisted for some time past of an Assistant District Commissioner and a District Officer in each subdistrict. Appeal lies therefrom only on a point of law to the Land Court by leave of that Court. The practice and procedure followed in any enquiry before these Commissions is set out in Regulations".

131. Landlords still found means of evading the intention of the Ordinance, principally by giving leases for periods of less than one year, generally for nine or ten months, sufficing for the cultivation
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* The Protection of Cultivators Regulations, 1934, Volume of subsidiary legislation 1934, p.99.

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