 According to Suleiman Shamlawi, from the nearby village of Haris, large parts of the Barkan industrial plant are built over 215 dunams (22 hectares) of land belonging to his family, which the IDF confiscated in 1981 on the grounds it was not registered as private property in 1967.Shamlawi states that, while this is true, records of his tax payments to the Jordanian authorities prove that the family paid its taxes on the land to the Jordanian governing authority down to 1967.The case was argued before the Supreme Court of Israel which ruled that the Shamlawi family had proven its ownership, and was entitled to register its land with Israel.