Nakba Descendants Seek Reparations Through Family Archive

WASHINGTON (05-18) – In observance of the 77th anniversary of the Nakba (catastrophe), on May 15, Khalil Jahshan, executive director of the Arab Center Washington DC (ACW), introduced “Survivors of the Nakba from Landowners to Refugees” by presenting the Bseiso Family Archive of Palestinian landownership records.

The extensive Bseiso Family Archive chronicles Palestinian life from 1906 to 1997, with Jahshan noting it is “the largest known collection of original documents from a single Palestinian family detailing land ownership before 1948.” The archive introduces compelling legal evidence of the historical “property theft and mass dispossession” that took place.

The archival collection was founded by Adel Bseiso who organized and preserved its many “Hijjeh deeds, tax receipts, maps, surveys, and official correspondence.” Adel spoke of the historical archive that his grandfather Mahrous Mustafa Bseiso, a prominent successful businessman and major landowner, maintained for his numerous purchases of properties which he utilized in transforming the desert around Bi’r Al-Sab’ (Beersheva) into “flourishing gardens, farms and mills.” The meticulous records of his extensive holdings were eventually passed along to his son, Adel’s father.

Adel’s family left Palestine and resettled as refugees in the US where he and his siblings were sheltered from the family’s plight of loss and displacement by their parents who rarely spoke of their past. After spending years searching for an answer, Adel discovered the reason of their plight through the wealth of property documents given to him by his late father.

He noted that the importance of the archives documents is in the telling of the “forced displacement endured by countless Palestinian families” that took place under the ruse of Palestinians being “absentee” property owners, conveniently disregarding that they had been violently expelled from their properties at gunpoint. He went on to say that the records reflect not only his family’s experience but that of the “broader pattern of dispossession.”

Working tirelessly for two years starting in 2019, Adel preserved, scanned and transformed the collection into “the first Digital Library Collection of its kind” for researchers, journalists and others. The valuable resource of archived documents is now housed in the Edward Said Modern Arab Studies collection at Columbia University.

When asked about having selected Columbia University as a depository for the archive considering the recent campus protests and unrest over the Gaza genocide, Adel responded that he was told by the university that the archive would have to be kept “on a low key.” However, his main interest he said is in education, access and in “humanizing Palestinians.”

In compiling the archive, Adel has also undertaken extensive research using maps, GPS and satellite imagery to compare the property deed’s original locations in the center of Beersheva, with their present-day reconfigurations on the ground that has identified many high-rise buildings, industrial complexes, shopping centers and modern-day residential buildings all constructed on the stolen land.

Today, the family’s land is “unrecognizable,” and he estimates that it is “worth billions.” Adel described the net effect of the theft as “a legacy erased, an inheritance stolen and an opportunity denied,” saying also that he hopes the archive will “… create a legal framework that will pave the way for justice and reparation for all Palestinians.”

Addressing the legal context of the Bseiso family ownership of their stolen land, human rights attorney Jonathan Kuttab, a leading expert on Palestinian land law, said “the archive has legal consequences” and that “the archive’s documentation is courtroom quality.” He went on to say that initially “Palestinians thought their ‘just case’ was enough to seek justice but soon learned that they needed evidence not just emotion.” But once Palestinians became aware of the importance of evidence, the Israeli authorities began going after every “Palestinian Archive” and other such collections of property related evidence.

Evidence, he said, was the reason why Israel has been targeting journalists in keeping the narrative of what is happening in Gaza from becoming future evidence of the genocide. Kuttab also stressed how the killing of journalists and killing the truth by the Israeli military and the silence about it in controlling the narrative, along with it not being reported by other journalists, is one of the crimes of the ongoing genocide.

Kuttab went further by mentioning that Mahrous Mustafa Bseiso had “gone out of his way to register his land and to obtain for it TABO registration [Ottoman registration for tax purposes] so there would be no question about its ownership,” thus exchanging local informal knowledge of ownership for officially recognized private individual ownership registration.

While the Israelis have never questioned Mahrous Mustafa Bseiso’s ownership of the land, they instead declared him an “absentee owner,” allowing them under Israeli law to confiscate, re-parcellate and transfer the land to be resold.

In considering how to resolve the issues around the theft through the courts, nothing has been decided yet as they are still gathering, collecting and documenting further evidence before moving forward. However, one legal strategy, Kuttab said, is to file lawsuits in the national courts of any foreign corporation occupying the stolen land for unpaid rent to the legal owners, thus bypassing the systemic bias of Israeli courts where they would not prevail.

Kuttab told Adel that “right now there is not a single jurisdiction that would hear the case. But you should preserve the evidence because the day will come when we will be able to bring the case.”

Palestine Project Coordinator at the ACW Hanna Alshaikh pointed out that “The Nakba is not just a past event—it is an ongoing process of displacement, land theft and erasure. The Bseiso Family Archive stands as a powerful model of resistance, preserving the legal, political and personal truths that Israel has long sought to destroy through obliteration of archives, libraries and research institutions.”

Samah Elhajibrahim PhD, a political science lecturer and scholar on refugee status, said that the archive “challenges dominant narratives of dispossession, and the renewed global attention to the Palestinian cause. Our time is coming…The archive is about planting the seeds of justice, reparation, and the future of Palestine.”

As a displaced person herself having grown up as a Palestinian refugee in Lebanon, she said, “To be a Palestinian refugee is to live on hold.”

Report and photos by Phil Pasquini

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