Resettlement of displaced Wadi al-Hawarith (Tulkarm Sub-District) Palestinian Arabs before 1948 (Nakba), British Mandate: A Survey of Palestine: Volume I - Page 297. Section 8: Administrative Problems Regarding to State Holdings : (c)

CHAPTER VIII.

linking fund charges upon the loan. But in January, 1932, the Secretary of State intimated that conditions had changed in the interim, and that it could not be assumed that it would be found practicable to make £P.2.500,000 available for development purposes.

148. The Director of Development left Palestine in June, 1932, and the Department of Development was re-organized and placed in the charge of a development officer. This officer was instructed to draw up schemes for the resettlement of the displaced Arab cultivators admitted to the Register which schemes were to be financed from a sum of £P.250,000 made available for the purpose as an advance against the proposed £2 ,500 ,000 loan.

149. As suitable State Domain lands were not available, land on which to settle the displaced cultivators on the Register had to be purchased from private owners. An area of 17 ,868 dunums was accordingly purchased in the Beisan and Jenin sub-districts at a cost of £P.72,240. It was calculated that this area would provide subsistence areas for some 400 families.

150. The Department of Development was abolished in 1939 and the management of the settlements which had already been started devolved upon the District Commissioners, whilst to the Department of Land Settlement fell the task of attempting to regularise the occupation of Arabs who had been allowed to occupy the land without the terms on which they would hold it having been settled. The keeping of the Register of landless Arabs was discontinued and sporadic cases of landlessness are now dealt with as and when they occur.

THE ARARS OF WADI EL HAWARITH IN THE TULKARM SUB-DISTRICT:

151.. The first landless Arabs to be dealt with were the Wadi Hawarith Arabs, whose landlord had disposed of his land to the Jewish National Fund. Judgment for their eviction had already been passed as early as the end of 1929, and it became imperative to find other land to which they could move. Government thereupon undertook the reclamation and deep ploughing of some 10,000 dunums of the land which it had purchased in the Beisan sub-district, with a view to settling these Arabs upon it, and by the 31st of August, 1933, the major portion of the area was ready for occupation. On being evicted from the Wadi Hawarith, the Arabs, however, refused to settle on the lands prepared for them on the grounds that they were used neither to the climate nor to irrigated cultivation; their settlement in the Beisan sub-district had accordingly to be abandoned.

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