The Palestinian Authority (PA) over the past week has reportedly ramped up its campaign against doing business with Israelis. On January 27, Ramallah reportedly ordered the closure of a Palestinian-owned cement factory accused of coordinating with Jewish communities located beyond the pre-1967 borders. Meanwhile, a Bethlehem court convicted a Palestinian man to 15 years of hard labor in prison for attempting to sell land to an Israeli.
Indeed, the PA considers selling land in the West Bank, including the eastern part of Jerusalem, to Jews a heinous crime that in some cases warrants the death penalty. By outlawing such transactions, including through fatwas, the PA has tried to stop what it calls the “Judaization of the Palestinian lands.” Those violating the prohibition have reportedly been subject to extrajudicial killings.
Join the fight for Israel’s fair coverage in the news
Selling Land to Jews: a Capital Offense
There are multiple laws under which the PA currently prosecutes citizens who sell land to Israelis, with courts having cited numerous statutes and ordinances in their verdicts. In fact, Palestinians are governed by a somewhat incoherent mix of regulations introduced when Jordan ruled the West Bank from 1948-1967 and, subsequently, through PA decrees.
Before Israel assumed control of the West Bank during the Six Day War, Jordanian law carried a punishment of up to five years in prison for selling land to “foreigners.” Even as late as 1973, the Jordanian parliament, under the direct instructions of the late King Hussein, passed an even stricter “Law to Prevent the Sale of Land to the Enemy,” which explicitly barred any Jordanian citizens in the West Bank from selling land to Israelis.
The 1973 law defined the transaction as a security offense punishable by death. Offenders also risked forfeiting all their property to the state. The same law also forbade land sales to “aliens,” referring to non-Jordanians or non-Arabs, without the Council of Ministers’ permission. This provision effectively banned Jordanians from selling property specifically to Jews.
As part of the Oslo Accords with Israel, the Palestine Liberation Organization agreed that all existing laws inconsistent with the peace agreement would be null and void. As many have pointed out, the Jordanian law violates at least two provisions of the pact. Nevertheless, shortly after its establishment, the Palestinian Authority indicated that it would still enforce the 1973 Jordanian law in areas under its administrative control.
Related Reading: Do You Know Your Area A, B and C?
“Our law is a Jordanian law that we inherited… and sets the death penalty for those who sell land to Israelis,” Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth quoted Yasser Arafat as saying in 1997. That same year, the PA’s first justice minister, Freih Abu Medein, asserted that, “for us [the Palestinian leadership], whoever sells land to Jews and settlers is more dangerous than collaborators. Therefore,” he continued, “they must be put on trial and sentenced to death… they are traitors.”
Since the Palestinians were granted limited self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, an unknown number have been convicted of selling land to their Jewish neighbors. Although official figures are lacking, sporadic reports from the Palestinian territories paint a bleak picture. In June 1997, a month after Abu Medein announced the policy, Israeli intelligence indicated that at least 16 land dealers received a death sentence.
The PA doesn’t just outlaw dealings with Israeli Jews. After reports surfaced that Palestinians had sold plots of land to American Jewish businessmen, the PA in 2009 reaffirmed its commitment to the law that has been blasted by many as racist, calling the transactions “high treason.”
Although clear evidence of the practice is hard to find, there are indications that the PA continues to take the law seriously. In 2018, the PA arrested 44 Palestinians in a single operation aimed at preventing such deals.
Extrajudicial Killings and Social Pressure
Some note that under Palestinian law, PA President Mahmoud Abbas has to sign off on death sentences. The last time he agreed to do so was in 2006. Rights groups, however, have accused the PA of being involved in extrajudicial killings of land dealers. This dates as far back as the First Intifada (1987-1993). After the establishment of the PA in 1994, Justice Minister Abu Medein spoke approvingly of instances during that period in which “people who sold land to Israelis were shot as traitors.”
Groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, along with Israeli intelligence services, have suggested that the PA’s involvement in these unlawful killings has continued to this day. Palestinian human rights activist Bassem Eid in a 2019 written statement to the UN Human Rights Council described how Palestinian security forces allegedly go so far as to kidnap suspects, even those residing outside of their jurisdiction, with the explicit goal of murdering them.
Besides legal and physical threats, Palestinians are also under severe social and religious pressure not to do business with Jews. By issuing fatwas, Islamic religious rulings that label Muslims who sell Palestinian land to Jews as infidels, Palestinian clerics have attempted to ostracize these Palestinians from their communities. This dates as far back as 1935, when the virulently antisemitic former grand mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, prohibited the sale of Palestinian land plots to Jews on religious grounds.
Based on this ruling, modern-day Palestinian clerics have even refused to bury those accused of selling land to Jews in Islamic graveyards. In 2018, Jerusalem Chief Rabbi Aryeh Stern allowed a Palestinian Muslim to be buried in a Jewish cemetery, after imams accused the deceased of selling real estate to Jews. “Since the Muslims will not bury him, we must correct the distortion of justice that results in unjust humiliation of a man whose only sin was being prepared to sell land to Jews,” Stern wrote.
