11 May 26
“The language of “abandoned property” is therefore misleading. A house is not abandoned when its inhabitants are driven out, barred from returning, or converted by law into absentees. A bank account is not abandoned because its depositor is Palestinian and has become a refugee. A citrus grove does not lose its owner because the road back has been closed by Israel. The legal classification did not merely describe absence; it turned absence into a mechanism of power.”