Abdullatif Kalafani, an 81- year-old Palestinian exile living in Lebanon, is the owner of house number 15 on al Burj Street, now renamed Liberation street, in Haifa. Kalafani is one of many Palestinians who still owns property in Israel, but maybe not for long. House number 15 has been put up for sale in one of the public auctions that developing municipalities are running in different urban areas like Haifa, Acre and Jerusalem. Since 2007, the Israel Land Administration (ILA) has been issuing tenders for auctioning properties that belong to some 800,000 refugees who were forced out of Israel in 1948 and 1967. So far, 282 tenders were issued in 2007, 106 in 2008, and 80 in the first six months of 2009. Adalah, a legal center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, is trying to stop the issuance of these tenders, saying that selling these properties is illegal under
