Turkey has transferred to the Palestinian Authority a copy of the Ottoman Empire archives, including tens of thousands of land registries from the territories under its control between the years 1516 to 1917.
Attorneys for the PA are already using the archived material, in order to undermine Israeli claims to land across Israel, primarily in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria.
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The first complete copy of the archive was initially handed over to the PA at its consulate in Ankara. In March of last year portions of the archive were transferred to Bethlehem. The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center tracked the archive's movement and initial transfer to PA hands. For some reason, however, although the Palestinians were given a tool with the potential to destabilize Israel's real estate market, the story failed to make waves and the market's foundations haven't been shaken.
The key figure at the ceremony in Bethlehem was PA Religious Endowments Minister Yousef Adais, who received the files pertaining to the Waqf religious authority's assets in Bethlehem and Jerusalem.
Presently, east-Jerusalem-based attorneys are routinely referencing the archive to find information. The documents have been helping them in the legal battles they are waging over numerous land deeds, mainly in the Jerusalem area.
Among the more prominent cases are those that relate to properties and plots in the Old City, currently being contested by Jews and Arabs. The most notorious of these cases pertains to the Western Wall plaza, adjacent to the Mughrabi Quarter (or Moroccan Quarter), which Israel cleared off and demolished to make way for a prayer area. While this is land that Israel expropriated, with little to no legal prospects of this being reversed, at least in terms of propaganda presenting the land registries, it could be embarrassing to Israel.
Judge Musa Shakarneh, Chairman of the Palestinian Land Authority, is already registering for lands via the Land Registration Offices for Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem, among other things with the assistance of Turkey and its Ottoman-era archives.
In an interview to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa, Shakarneh explained that land registrations of Palestinians living abroad were helping him realize the "right of return."
