Politics and Property Rights in Israel

By Jerold S. Auerbach

What explains the persistent collaboration of Israeli politicians across party lines to deny the property rights of Jews where they have every historical and legal right to live? Ninety years ago, the League of Nations, seeking to establish a peaceful new world order after the carnage of war, turned its attention to Palestine. Wrested from the defeated Ottoman Empire, the ancient homeland of the Jewish people suddenly appeared on the international agenda. Lord James Balfour's declaration, five years earlier, that "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people" had ratified the Zionist dream. Winston Churchill, British secretary of state for the colonies, reassured uneasy Arabs that the declaration did not mean that "Palestine as a whole should be converted into a Jewish National Home, but that such a Home should be founded in Palestine." He also declared that the Declaration, reaffirmed by the San Remo Conference and the Treaty of Sevres in 1920, "is not susceptible of change." But where.... (Read Full Article)