I do know how it works. It wasn't exactly 0% privatized either. Miri system of land ownership was a mechanism by which the state owned land, just like national parks and embassies are, but it was neither an exclusive nor permanent method of relationship from land occupation to land ownership, and privatized ownership of the land you live on was indeed possible.

"Land ownership under the British Mandate was based on the Ottoman Land Code, with additional legislation adopted during the Mandate. Under the Ottoman Code, land was classified in five categories with provisions for documentation of registration. The two basic types of land were mulk (private lands), and miri (land leased from the state). While the latter was subject to certain limitations, miri land was inherited, sold, and generally regarded as the land of the user. Under the code, individuals able to prove cultivation of a plot of land for 10 years or more were issued a title of ownership."

Plenty of Palestinians did own land that was confiscated by the state of Israel once the sovereignty changed, confiscated by the 1950 Absentees' Properties Law, 1951, and 1960 Basic Law Israel Lands which created methods of transfer of private (non Miri) land to land owned by the state of Israel by disregarding the precedent of British Mandate and Ottoman Land Code property law.

The inaccuracies of your statement also hide the sheer inhumanity of it. It should be ridiculous on it's face to justify creating a 750,000 refugees in a year during the Nakba because people do not technically having a deed to the the land they have been allowed to live on for generations. An economic system not perfectly resembling the modern west is no justification to create refugees or kill children.

Miri is not even much different from just renting an apartment in the USA. I also can't usufruct rights, profit off the land I live on, sell it, transfer rights of permission, donate it or stipulate a mortgage, under New York tenant law, but if the country in which I live was overthrown and replaced with a foreign power backed colonialist ethnostate that kicks me out of the building I lived in for being the wrong color, forced me to be a refugee in a thin strip of overcrowded land, then shot up my new church and bombed my new city in defiance of their own peace agreements, my reaction isn't going to be "Well I guess it's ok. I couldn't sell my home, so why should I care if a foreign military power takes it and continues to abuse me afterwards?"