In the first half of the 19th century, no foreigners were allowed to purchase land in Palestine.[citation needed] This was official Turkish policy until 1856 and in practice until 1867.[5] When it came to the national aspirations of the Zionist movement, the Ottoman Empire opposed the idea of Jewish self-rule in Palestine, fearing it may lose control of Palestine after recently having lost other territories to various European powers. It also took issue with the Jews, as many came from Russia, which sought the empire's demise.[6] In 1881 the Ottoman governmental administration (the Sublime Porte) decreed that foreign Jews could immigrate to and settle anywhere within the Ottoman Empire, except in Palestine and from 1882 until their defeat in 1918, the Ottomans continuously restricted Jewish immigration and land purchases in Palestine.[6] In 1882, Jews were banned from their Four Holy Cities and in 1891, after briefly allowing some Jewish immigration three years earlier, the Turkish rulers tried to again close the empire to Russian Jews.[6] In 1892, the Ottoman government decided to prohibit the sale of land in Palestine to Jews, even if they were Ottoman citizens.[7] Nevertheless, during the late 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, many successful land purchases were made through organizations such as the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association (PJCA), Palestine Land Development Company and the Jewish National Fund.


Jewish rabbis purchasing land from an Arab landowner, 1920s.
The Ottoman Land Code of 1858 "brought about the appropriation by the influential and rich families of Beirut, Damascus, and to a lesser extent Jerusalem and Jaffa and other sub-district capitals, of vast tracts of land in Syria and Palestine and their registration in the name of these families in the land registers".[8] Many of the fellahin did not understand the importance of the registers and therefore the wealthy families took advantage of this. Jewish buyers who were looking for large tracts of land found it favorable to purchase from the wealthy owners. As well many small farmers became in debt to rich families which led to the transfer of land to the new owners and then eventually to the Jewish buyers.

In 1918, after the British conquest of Palestine, the military administration closed the Land Register and prohibited all sale of land. The Register was reopened in 1920, but to prevent speculation and ensure a livelihood for the fellahin, an edict was issued forbidding the sale of more than 300 dunams of land or the sale of land valued at more than 3000 Palestine pounds without the approval of the High Commissioner.[9]

From the 1880s to the 1930s, most Jewish land purchases were made in the coastal plain, the Jezreel Valley, the Jordan Valley and to a lesser extent the Galilee.[8] This was due to a preference for land that was cheap and without tenants.[8] There were two main reasons why these areas were sparsely populated. The first reason being when the Ottoman power in the rural areas began to diminish in the seventeenth century, many people moved to more centralized areas to secure protection against the lawless Bedouin tribes.[8] The second reason for the sparsely populated areas of the coastal plains was the soil type. The soil, covered in a layer of sand, made it impossible to grow the staple crop of Palestine, corn.[8] As a result, this area remained uncultivated and under populated.[4] "The sparse Arab population in the areas where the Jews usually bought their land enabled the Jews to carry out their purchase without engendering a massive displacement and eviction of Arab tenants".[8]

In the 1930s most land was bought from small landowners. Of the land that the Jews bought, "52.6% of the lands were bought from big non-Palestinian landowners, 24.6% from Palestinian-Arab landowners and only 9.4% from the Fellahin".[10]

On 31 December 1944, out of 1,732.63 dunums of land owned in Palestine by large Jewish Corporations and private owners, about 44% was in possession of Jewish National Fund. The table below shows the land ownership of Palestine by large Jewish Corporations (in square kilometres) on 31 December 1945.