Optimistically, it was hoped that 10,000 landless families might be settled on 150,000 hectares, but this first timid attempt at agrarian reform, well-intentioned as it was, played disastrously into the hands of the F.L.N. Jean Servier recalls how, after a parcel of land had been handed over to a fellah, he "immediately found himself condemned to death. A few days later a patrol found the body of the happy proprietor with his throat slit in his own field." As a result few Muslim peasants henceforth had the courage to come forward to accept the French bounty. In Servier's view it would have been more sensible to redistribute the land to communities instead of individuals — because then the F.L.N. would be forced to kill a whole village, and the villagers might have been encouraged to protect the land collectively.

DEFINE: 'Fellah' refers to a peasant farmer in North Africa; the term and the land-community distinction are worth clarifying.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 476