"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence."
- - - John Adams
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| National borders may change over the years, but the rights of individuals to own private property within those borders should be protected. |
Imagine you are a rancher in Texas. Your family has been working the property since 1850. Now imagine Barack Obama and Eric Holder confiscate your land and re-distribute it to the "original inhabitants" of the area.
Soon, one by one, your neighbor's ranches are being taken by the government for "re-distribution." Next individual homes are being taken.
Is it possible that Texans might be angry? It might even be possible they would fight back.
A lack of respect for property rights.
Property rights. In a nut shell you have a major reason for the fighting in the Middle East and in many other nations around the world. This story is not about taking sides in the Middle East with the different nations or peoples. It is about the property rights of individuals.
A person born in Texas in 1810 would have been a citizen of multiple nations in their lifetime.
- A subject of the Kingdom of Spain
- A subject of the Empire of Mexico
- A citizen of the Republic of Mexico
- A citizen of the Republic of Texas
- A citizen of the United States
- A citizen of the Confederate States of America
- A citizen of the United States
So, do Arabs have property rights? The L.A. Times did an extensive article on a property rights battle in Palestine. Unless the property rights of all peoples are respected there will be no peace.
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| "The Israelis want this whole area. Their plan is to force as many of us as possible to leave," said Palestinian Christian Daoud Nassar, who is fighting to hold on to his family's farm in Nahalin. |
A Palentinian Christian Fought Back
NAHALIN, WEST BANK— From his hilltop farm, Daoud Nassar can see the sun rise over the Jordan Valley and set in the Mediterranean, an arc that spans the territorial breadth of his people's conflict with Israel.
For nearly a generation, Nassar and his family have stood their ground, unarmed, against pistol-toting settlers who have barricaded the farm's dirt lanes, uprooted its olive groves, tried to bulldoze their own roads and disabled a tractor and a rooftop water tank.
The family has rebuffed anonymous Jewish callers offering blank checks for the property, and spent $145,000 in a marathon legal battle to keep the land that Nassar's grandfather, a Christian from Lebanon, bought in 1916 when it was part of the Ottoman Empire. For more than 90 years, Nassars have worked the land, growing almonds, figs, grapes, olives, pears and pomegranates.
The feuding over these stark hills, ridges and valleys south and east of Bethlehem, a 27-square-mile region that includes the Nassar farm, is emblematic of the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- a struggle rooted in land.
NAHALIN, WEST BANK— From his hilltop farm, Daoud Nassar can see the sun rise over the Jordan Valley and set in the Mediterranean, an arc that spans the territorial breadth of his people's conflict with Israel.
For nearly a generation, Nassar and his family have stood their ground, unarmed, against pistol-toting settlers who have barricaded the farm's dirt lanes, uprooted its olive groves, tried to bulldoze their own roads and disabled a tractor and a rooftop water tank.
The family has rebuffed anonymous Jewish callers offering blank checks for the property, and spent $145,000 in a marathon legal battle to keep the land that Nassar's grandfather, a Christian from Lebanon, bought in 1916 when it was part of the Ottoman Empire. For more than 90 years, Nassars have worked the land, growing almonds, figs, grapes, olives, pears and pomegranates.
The feuding over these stark hills, ridges and valleys south and east of Bethlehem, a 27-square-mile region that includes the Nassar farm, is emblematic of the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- a struggle rooted in land.
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| PROPERTY RIGHTS BE DAMNED "In my view, Israel from the Mediterranean to the Jordan Valley is a Jewish state", said Mayor Shaul Goldstein |
"The Israelis want this whole area. Their plan is to force as many of us as possible to leave," said Nassar, a square-jawed man of 37 with a calm, hopeful disposition and a mop of curly dark hair. "But we have to encourage people, empower them, to stay."
The struggle over his hundred acres, a drama both intimate and epic, has consumed Nassar's adult life and reached what could prove to be its final act.
"It is our land, and our land is like our mother," he said. "I cannot abandon or sell my mother."
Property rights have no meaning for some
The struggle over his hundred acres, a drama both intimate and epic, has consumed Nassar's adult life and reached what could prove to be its final act.
"It is our land, and our land is like our mother," he said. "I cannot abandon or sell my mother."
Property rights have no meaning for some
"In my view, Israel from the Mediterranean to the Jordan Valley is a Jewish state," said Shaul Goldstein, 48, a mechanical engineer and air force veteran who is mayor of a group of settlements that form the Gush Etzion Regional Council. "Its lands are earmarked first and foremost for Jewish citizens."
Most West Bank Palestinian families lack formal land titles. In theory, Israeli law allows them to keep rural land acquired without title before 1967 as long as they keep it cultivated. In practice, Israeli and Palestinian lawyers say, titled and cultivated land is often seized.
"The burden of proof is always on the Palestinians," said Sani Khoury, a Jerusalem-based Palestinian lawyer who handles land holders' appeals. "The other team makes the rules."
Palestinians often learn they are being dispossessed when Israeli bulldozer crews with military orders and police escorts start clearing the land in question, the lawyers say. By then it is too late for legal recourse.
Parcel by parcel, Israel is taking control of farms, pastures and underground water sources to expand the Gush Etzion settlements for a growing population that now totals more than 55,000.
According to Taayush, a Tel Aviv-based organization that advocates Israeli-Palestinian cooperation, the region's 20,000 Palestinian residents have lost at least one-fifth of their land to the settlements, which sprawl closer to their homes by the day.
Most West Bank Palestinian families lack formal land titles. In theory, Israeli law allows them to keep rural land acquired without title before 1967 as long as they keep it cultivated. In practice, Israeli and Palestinian lawyers say, titled and cultivated land is often seized.
"The burden of proof is always on the Palestinians," said Sani Khoury, a Jerusalem-based Palestinian lawyer who handles land holders' appeals. "The other team makes the rules."
Palestinians often learn they are being dispossessed when Israeli bulldozer crews with military orders and police escorts start clearing the land in question, the lawyers say. By then it is too late for legal recourse.
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| Some $70,000 was spent sending an expert to Istanbul to research 100 year old Imperial Ottoman land records to defend the Nassar family farm against having their land taken by their Jewish neighbors. |
Parcel by parcel, Israel is taking control of farms, pastures and underground water sources to expand the Gush Etzion settlements for a growing population that now totals more than 55,000.
According to Taayush, a Tel Aviv-based organization that advocates Israeli-Palestinian cooperation, the region's 20,000 Palestinian residents have lost at least one-fifth of their land to the settlements, which sprawl closer to their homes by the day.
In 1991, the Israeli military committee had ordered three-fourths of the farm taken by the state, claiming it was neither privately owned nor actively cultivated. The family went to court to challenge the order with land ownership papers dated and stamped 1924. But the military judge rejected the challenge, ruling the hand-drawn map inadmissible as evidence.
The ownership papers had been honored by Turkish, British and Jordanian rulers who came and went. And until the 1991 order, there had been no hint of trouble with the new Jewish overlords.
"I had nothing against the Israelis as a people, but to see them coming from other countries and trying to take this land, which we had owned for generations, it really frustrated us," said Nassar, who was a 21-year-old undergraduate at Bethlehem University when the case went to court. "What else did we need, a document from God?"
Nassar, who has since married and fathered three children, sprinkles his conversation with biblical citations. He speaks with the upbeat certitude of someone who, not unlike the Jewish settlers, views his land battle as a matter of religious faith.
"There is a goal behind why we are here," he said, explaining what he accepts as a Christian calling: While mounting a legal defense, he has plowed his frustration over judicial setbacks and delays into a project that uses the farm as a center for nonviolent activism.
The ownership papers had been honored by Turkish, British and Jordanian rulers who came and went. And until the 1991 order, there had been no hint of trouble with the new Jewish overlords.
"I had nothing against the Israelis as a people, but to see them coming from other countries and trying to take this land, which we had owned for generations, it really frustrated us," said Nassar, who was a 21-year-old undergraduate at Bethlehem University when the case went to court. "What else did we need, a document from God?"
Nassar, who has since married and fathered three children, sprinkles his conversation with biblical citations. He speaks with the upbeat certitude of someone who, not unlike the Jewish settlers, views his land battle as a matter of religious faith.
"There is a goal behind why we are here," he said, explaining what he accepts as a Christian calling: While mounting a legal defense, he has plowed his frustration over judicial setbacks and delays into a project that uses the farm as a center for nonviolent activism.
The Nassars returned to military court with a new survey map and scores of witnesses to back their land claim. The case languished until 2002, when the judge, without explanation, ruled against the family.
Few Palestinians have the money, will, know-how or faith in Israeli justice to challenge land takeovers in court, much less to appeal the military courts' routinely unfavorable rulings. But Nassar tapped his family's modest wealth and a peace-activist network that includes interfaith organizations in Europe and the United States, the Israeli group Rabbis for Human Rights and his own Lutheran congregation in Bethlehem.
Few Palestinians have the money, will, know-how or faith in Israeli justice to challenge land takeovers in court, much less to appeal the military courts' routinely unfavorable rulings. But Nassar tapped his family's modest wealth and a peace-activist network that includes interfaith organizations in Europe and the United States, the Israeli group Rabbis for Human Rights and his own Lutheran congregation in Bethlehem.
The Nassars appealed to Israel's Supreme Court.
A skeptical Supreme Court panel demanded an explanation of the military court's ruling and ordered a halt to the settlers' incursions onto the property. The state attorney's office argued that the farm's coordinates did not precisely match those in the 1924 land documents.
The Nassars countered with a surprise star witness. At a cost of $70,000, they had hired a leading Israeli surveyor and sent him to London and Istanbul, Turkey, to dig up colonial land records, which were used in 2004 to rebut the state's argument.
The state attorney's office did not challenge the surveyor's evidence but stalled for three more years before dropping the case -- before the Supreme Court could rule. It has notified the Nassars that they may register their land, a process expected to take an additional year.
"For now they have won," Kuttab said. "They get to keep their land -- until the Israelis find another way to try to take it."
EDITOR'S NOTE: The Nassar's family's fight to protect their land goes on today. Those interested can visit their web-site at http://fotonna.org/index.html
For more on this story
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| American Conservatives are quick to defend some farmer or home owner in New Jersey against a goverment takeover of their private property. But Americans are blind to private property rights in the Middle East. |
The Nassars appealed to Israel's Supreme Court.
Eventually, the family got what it considered a fair hearing.
A skeptical Supreme Court panel demanded an explanation of the military court's ruling and ordered a halt to the settlers' incursions onto the property. The state attorney's office argued that the farm's coordinates did not precisely match those in the 1924 land documents.
The Nassars countered with a surprise star witness. At a cost of $70,000, they had hired a leading Israeli surveyor and sent him to London and Istanbul, Turkey, to dig up colonial land records, which were used in 2004 to rebut the state's argument.
The state attorney's office did not challenge the surveyor's evidence but stalled for three more years before dropping the case -- before the Supreme Court could rule. It has notified the Nassars that they may register their land, a process expected to take an additional year.
"For now they have won," Kuttab said. "They get to keep their land -- until the Israelis find another way to try to take it."
EDITOR'S NOTE: The Nassar's family's fight to protect their land goes on today. Those interested can visit their web-site at http://fotonna.org/index.html
For more on this story
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