Under Palestinian Arab law, the selling of land to Jews is illegal and punishable by death. However a Hamas newspaper called Palestine on Monday reported that 100 dunams of land in the Tulkarem area were recently sold in transactions carried out through Israeli lawyers. This land is located north of Tulkarem in the village of Deir Al-Rosson.
Deir Al-Rosson mayor, Abdel Karim Ghanem told Palestine that information indicates land in the area is being sold to Israeli citizens. Ghanem called on the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its government to investigate this matter.
As we said before, selling land to Jews is illegal and punishable by death though it wasn’t always enforced. However in 2014, Abbas toughened the PA law against selling property to Israeli Jews. Any Palestinian Arab involved in renting, selling or facilitating real estate transactions with citizens of “hostile countries” in any way would receive life imprisonment and hard-labor. These sentences must be approved by the PA chairman, who now prefers giving life sentences for such offenses instead of the death sentence. This may because he fears international backlash.