Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle · Milwaukee, Wisconsin · 13 May 1949
CP-1949-026
Absentees’ Property
Transcribed from the clipping
“Nearly 70 percent of the area of the state of Israel consists of… land abandoned by Arabs and as such is administered by the custodian of absentees’ property. The custodian’s office has arranged for the bringing-in of grain and fruit harvests from these lands and also for their partial cultivation during the current season.
The custodian also considers claims by Jews against absentee Arab property owners and vice versa, and guarantees the restitution of their possessions to Arab residents of Israel. So far, 200 claims have been proffered in Jaffa alone; out of 100 claims which have already been investigated, 40 proved to be unfounded.
During the fighting, thefts and even wanton destruction of abandoned Arab property were common, but order has since been restored and land, houses and equipment of all kinds from this source are now being disposed of systematically and legally.
The army has priority on all such transactions… It has been widely recognized that the cultivation of small orchards by a few hired hands ceased to be an economic proposition as soon as Arab cheap labor was eliminated.”
Context added by this archive
Disposed of systematically and legally. The main headline is trimmed off the scan; the section head above the passage is what is legible.
A correction
Slide 7 of the presentation pairs the El Reno American caption with a crop of this article. The two crops on that slide are one Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle piece; the El Reno scan is the wirephoto filed separately.
Cite this clipping
"Absentees’ Property," Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, 13 May 1949, p. 1. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1949-026. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1949-026
This clipping is read closely in the section below
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- All 334 clippings from the 1940s →
In these collections
Last updated 2 November 2026
This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1724 to 2023. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.
The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the news agency that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary. A city here is where the newspaper was published, not where the story came from, and on most records it was taken from the masthead.
Something wrong here, or something you know about this clipping? The archive is still being built and corrections are wanted: maria@rozumstudio.com, quoting CP-1949-026.
Read in: Three verbs for taking a Palestinian house
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