Is it older than Israel?

The Absentee Property Law was passed by the Knesset on 14 March 1950. It defined as an absentee anyone who, between 29 November 1947 and the end of the emergency, had been in an enemy country or in a part of Palestine outside Israel's control, and it vested their property in a Custodian who could pass it to the state's Development Authority.

The definition covered every refugee, and also Palestinians who had never left Israel but had been away from their village on the wrong day, who became "present absentees". Under the law, and the land laws that followed, the villages and fields of the refugees passed to the state and to the Jewish National Fund. It remains in force.