Settlement of the Title in the Galilee; Dowson's Colonial Guiding Principles

THE JUDICIAL PROCESS OF 'SETTLEMENT OF TITLE,' or 'land settlement,' constituted the core of British land regime reform in Mandate Palestine. This process, which relied on topographical and cadastral survey, exact mapping and extensive judicial investigation of land rights aimed at identifying an owner for every parcel of land in the country. ¹ British reformers sought to transform the traditional usufruct rights of the indigenous, majority Arab population and the minority population of European Jewish settlers into rights of ownership. ² They believed that the resulting security of title, in concert with comprehensive agricultural tax reform, would improve the position of small Palestinian Arab peasant farmers and revitalize Palestine's agriculture-based economy. ³

Sir Ernest Dowson was the British land expert whose theoretical ideas regarding land administration laid the foundation for the Mandate Government's land regime reform in Palestine. His reforms were initiated in the 1920s and implemented up to the end of Mandatory rule in 1948. The state of Israel retained the statutory and procedural basis for land settlement used during the Mandate, and Dowson has therefore been regarded as something of a 'founding father' with regard to Israeli settlement of title. However, as legal geographer Benjamin Forest points out, it is imperative to ". . . address not only historical developments that effect legal decisions, but seek to understand the meaning of legal texts and actions within a particular historical and geographical context." ⁴ In this case, the 1948 war and the establishment of the state of Israel resulted in a completely different historical and geographical context for land settlement. As a result, the engineers of land settlement in Israel abandoned decisive elements of Dowson's guiding principles, particularly in the case of land claimed by the Palestinian Arabs who became citizens of the state after 1948.

The premise of this article is that comprehension of changes in the principles underlying Israeli land settlement after 1948—or, more accurately, after 1954—enables us to better understand the transformation of the process as a whole, its motivations and impact, and the way it was carried out. Which of Dowson's principles did Israeli land settlement officials espouse? Did they, too, regard assisting small-scale Arab farmers in transforming their rights of usufruct into secure ownership as an important goal of land settlement? If not, then what were the considerations that motivated the "Special Operation of Land Settlement" undertaken in the predominantly Arab regions of northern Israel during this period? The first section of this article identifies a number of Dowson's guiding principles, as expressed in the plethora of written material that he produced during and after his service in Palestine. Subsequent sections focus on the principles adopted by the engineers of Israeli settlement of title in northern Israel during the 1950s and 1960s, and compare them to the Mandatory foundation established by Dowson. The differences between Mandatory and Israeli land settlement, it will be argued, are indicative of the differences between the two regimes' respective overall land policy goals.

Sir Ernest Dowson's Guiding Principles in Palestine

Dowson began his career in the colonies as an assistant engineer with the Egyptian Delta Light Railways at the age of 22, and three years later, in 1900, he was appointed to the Survey of Egypt. Much has been written about the next half-century, during which he faithfully served British colonial interests, earning the reputation of a land reform expert. ⁵ During his 23 years in Egypt, he served as Director-General of Surveys, Under-Secretary of State for Finance, Financial Advisor to the Egyptian Government and Chairman of a commission on land registration reform. From 1923 onward, he provided land reform advice for a large number of colonial territories, including Palestine, Trans-Jordan, Iraq, Zanzibar, Uganda, the Gold Coast, Kenya and Singapore. ⁶ His work in Palestine (1923-1927) was the most in-depth and hands-on, as well as the most...