"These people are worse than crooks," Suleiman told MEE. "We sent him packing."
Suleiman and dozens of other families approached in recent months have been left wondering why the lawyers sought them out now and how they know so much about them.
"He knew about how much land we owned in 1948, where our plots were located, and how to find us," he said.
Palestinian leaders in Israel strongly suspect they know the answer.
Hana Swaid, a former Palestinian member of the Israeli parliament who now heads an organization dealing with land issues, told MEE the Israeli government's fingerprints were all over the lawyers' scheme.
"These lawyers have access to official lists of absentee property that are extremely difficult to get hold of. Someone is clearly helping them -- and you don't need to look far to understand who it is."
Officials' guiding hand?Reports of lawyers making similar approaches to refugee families in Israel have been pouring in, leading to fears that an organized campaign to persuade refugees to sell their lands is underway.
The High Follow-Up Committee, an umbrella body representing the main Palestinian political leadership in Israel, recently launched a series of meetings in Israel's largest Palestinian communities to raise awareness.
"It seems clear that the Israeli government is the guiding hand behind these approaches," said Maysana Mourani, a lawyer with Adalah, a legal centre for the Palestinian minority that has been closely involved in the awareness-raising campaign.
At stake, say campaign organizers, is one of the core principles of the peace process: the right of the refugees to return to their lands or receive internationally arbitrated compensation as part of a final resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Cohen, of Hebrew University, told MEE Israel had shown an interest from the outset in persuading internal refugees -- those still living inside Israel -- to sign away rights to their lands.
Although the Absentee Property Law made no provision for compensation for refugees, he said, the Israeli parliament made an exemption for the internally displaced. They were allowed to seek compensation under later legislation, the Land Acquisitions Law of 1953.
Cohen said officials had imposed no deadline for the 300,000 internal refugees to sell their lands to the state.
He added that there was little information about these sales because neither Israeli officials nor Palestinians in Israel had an interest in publicizing such deals.
Land-dealing tabooFor Palestinian society, land dealing with Israel is considered taboo.
But some refugees admitted that Israel had been using various forms of pressure long before the latest lawyers' ruse to persuade families into signing away their rights.
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