"They are trying to put pressure on them by making them believe that this will be their last chance ever to gain compensation," she said. "But this court ruling is irrelevant to their rights."
Homeland "not for sale"The awareness-raising campaign has been conducted under the slogan: "Don't surrender our parents' and grandparents' lands."
Mourani told MEE that Israel had confiscated some 7,000 square km -- or a third of Israel's total territory -- from Palestinian refugees using the Absentee Property Law.
In subsequent years it expropriated a further 1,200 square km of land, much of it from Palestinian citizens, under the 1953 Land Acquisition Law, she added.
Mohammed Barakeh, head of the Follow-Up Committee, warned at a recent meeting in Nazareth: "Our homeland is not for sale."
He added: "Israel wants the signatures of the victims [of 1948] so that it will look like they have accepted both their expulsion from their lands and the Zionist account of the Nakba."
But lawyers behind the drive to persuade Palestinian families to sell their land said they had done nothing wrong.
Ayman Abu Raya, head of a law firm in Sakhnin, who has led calls for lawyers to help locate refugee families, called the awareness campaign "ugly."
"We have never misled anyone and everything we do is within the law," he told MEE. "We specialize in these kinds of compensation cases. The families are entitled to money and we help them get it."
He denied government involvement and said his firm located land deeds for refugees in the local land registry offices. He said he had won "substantial compensation" for many families.
Bishara, a lawyer with Adalah, said even if refugees did sell land it should not undermine their rights in international law.
"The right of return is not just an individual right but a collective matter for the Palestinians. It is a bigger issue than these land sales," she said.
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