Compensation for Jews Who Lose Homes in Disengagement

(Updated December 19 2007)

Under the disengagement plan, 21 Gaza settlements and four in the northern West Bank were evacuated in the summer of 2005. The settlements have been divided into four groups — three in the Gaza Strip and the fourth comrpising those in the West Bank. The evacuation started on August 17 and was expected to take about a month, but the operation went so smoothly that the civilians were evacuated from Gaza by August 22 and the West Bank the following day.

The army sent thousands of soldiers to every settlement in the Gaza Strip on August 15 with notices informing the Jews that they were required to leave their homes and those who left before the 17th would receive assistance from the IDF. Afterward, it was illegal for Israelis to stay and, at midnight on August 16, those that remained were to lose a significant proportion of their compensation.

On June 9, 2005, Israel’s Supreme Court rejected 12 petitions by opponents to the disengagement plan, ruling the pullout is legal and does not violate the settlers’ human rights. The court also rescinded four financial arrangements relating to compensation for the future evacuees:

• The court rejected a clause which would have barred recipients of compensation from filing a standard lawsuit for damages.
• The court, rejecting a deadline specified by the law, allowed settlers 30 days to choose the nature of the compensation plan they preferred.
• The court ruled that settlers under 21 may receive compensation. The law had set 21 as the minimum age for receipt of compensation funds.
• The court ruled that the day of actual evacuation will be used as the date used to determine the elements of the compensation package for each family, rather than June 4, 2004, as stated by the law.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered settler synagogues in the Gaza Strip to be relocated to Israel; however, the Supreme Court asked the government to ask the Palestinian Authority if it would allow them to remain intact and if it would protect them. The Palestinians said no.

The 48 graves of loved ones buried in Gaza were also dug up and moved to Israel.

In June 2005, Israel and the Palestinians agreed to cooperate on the demolition of the 1,600 Gaza houses to be vacated by Israeli settlers. The agreement represented the first concrete Israeli-Palestinian cooperation in Gaza after many months of disputes. Under the agreement, the Israelis will tear down the houses and the Palestinians will be paid to clean up the rubble, providing the Palestinians money for jobs. The Palestinians favored this approach because the buildings, mostly small single-family homes, would not meet the needs of the Gaza residents whose extended families of sometimes as many as 20 to 30 relatives typically live under one roof.

Under legislation passed by the Knesset, settlers are to be compensated for the loss of their homes, land and businesses.

Evacuated settlers will be eligible for a moving grant of approximately $2,100 for a family of three, $3,200 for a family of four or five; and $4,200 for a family of six or more.

A family of three will receive about $415 per month for six months of rent; a family of four-five will receive roughly $470; and families of more than six will get $520. New legislation would allow those building their own home to get a rental grant for a year with the option to renew for another year with the proper documents. Rental grants would also be given to those who don't leave until the day of the evacuation.

Most of the Jews living in Gaza are children. More than 46 percent are under 14, 10 percent are between 15 and 19, approximately 15 percent are in their 20s and 28 percent are between 30 and 59 years-old. Originally, the compensation law allowed everyone over the age of 21, who lived at least five consecutive years in a settlement to be evacuated, to apply for a $560 grant per year. The Supreme Court ruling noted above, however, said younger settlers should also be eligible.

Settlers who relocate to the Galilee or Negev will be eligible for a $30,000 bonus. In the most recent incarnation of the compensation bill, settlers moving to Ashkelon would get similar amounts. Alternative land will also be offered in those areas instead of cash on a first-come-first serve basis.

Land is to be compensated at the rate of $50,000 per dunam (4 dunams = 1 acre), with the value to be matched to land in the south. Homes will be compensated at a rate per meter. Residents living in prefabricated homes built by the Housing Ministry will be compensated at the rate of approximately $620 per square meter. Those living in homes built by the Housing Ministry or private contractors will be compensated at the rate of approximately $780 per square meter. Those living in build-your-own-home projects will receive roughly $935 per square meter. The newest compensation bill adds an additional $100 in value for every meter of construction.

Settlers who lived in the area for a least two years are entitled to more money. New legislation calls for an increase in the amount of individual compensation per year that a person has lived in the Gaza Strip from $550 a year to almost $1,100 a year. In the new compensation bill, a family of four that has lived in the Gaza Strip for four years would receive a total compensation package of $113,000 (up from $76,000), and a family of five that has lived there for six years would receive about $264,000 (up from $192,000). The average family will receive about $450,000.

Farmers are also being offered three options to receive land to farm and a plot on which to build a house. If the farmer accepts the agricultural land he receives $30,000 less in compensation fees; if he takes the plot of land on which to build a home, he receives $60,000 less in compensation; if he accepts both plots, he receives $90,000 less. A farmer who agrees to receive a plot with land for both agriculture and a home, in the preferred areas of the Negev or the Galilee, is eligible to receive 80 dunams of land. A second option provides for an agricultural plot closer to the Gaza border while living away from that plot. In such a case, he is eligible to receive 40 dunams ready for farming and a second agricultural plot of 40 dunams that he can develop on his own. In the third option, he can choose to have a farm of 40 dunams in a sought-after area such as Nitzan, for which the government will pay up to $3,000 a dunam, along with a half-dunam plot on which to build a home, as provided to all evacuees who want to build their own home, under the disengagement implementation law. Should the farmer currently have less than 40 dunams in Gaza, but want to expand his farm, the government will pay $1,500 per dunam and not $3,000 for the additional dunams.

After the Palestinians rejected a plan by which the United States would use foreign aid funds to pay Israeli settlers to transfer their greenhouses to the Palestinian Authority, a deal was brokered whereby the European-funded Economic Cooperation Foundation was to purchase the hothouses for $14 million and then execute the transfer. The money was being contributed by James Wolfensohn, the special American envoy for the disengagement and former head of the World Bank (who donated $500,000), and several of his friends. The deal included 90 percent of the greenhouses; the remainder had already been dismantled by their owners.

Workers who lose their jobs as a result of the disengagement will be eligible for unemployment benefits ranging from minimum wage (about $770) to twice the average salary (about $3,200) for up to six months. Workers between the ages of 50 to 55 would be eligible for a years' compensation, and those over 55 years old would be given a pension until they are 67 years of age, based on normative standards.

A special category was created for compensation for communities that move en masse that includes the government's commitment to replace communal buildings such as synagogues. In cases where a community does not move together and the communal property is lost, individuals would receive compensation for donations made to those buildings.

Tax on compensation sums given to business owners would be reduced from 10 to five percent. The value of compensation owed to hothouse owners would increase.

The Prime Minister's Office has ordered that 1,500 housing units, one for each settler family to be evacuated, be prepared by the Construction and Housing Ministry. To provide for the extra homes, the Housing Ministry doubled the number of apartments that will be made available in the Negev region, with most located in Ashkelon, Ashdod, and Beersheba.

“The prime minister has said that we have to give options to all the families, so that there will not be any reason for anyone to be in a tent or without a roof,” said Construction and Housing Director-General Shmuel Abuav.

The housing ministry estimated that as many as one-third of the settlers might decide to take the compensation money from the government and find their own housing. The rest were originally to be housed in caravans in clustered communities across the Negev. The cost to the government of caravans, however, is more than five times that of apartments.

The evacuation clauses were made more lenient by the Knesset Law Committee. Settlers who live in the areas and don't evacuate by the deadline can be punished by up to six months in prison instead of a year. Others who will be in the area illegally can be sentenced to two years instead of three. Families may be jailed together.

After the evacuation date, the residents have no legal claim to any of their moveable possessions remaining in the area designated for evacuation.

The total cost of the evacuation package adopted by the Knesset was 3.8 billion shekels, approximately $870 million; however, in light of the increase in the number of compensation claims after disengagement, the Knesset's Finance Committee approved on September 19, 2005, the allocation of an additional 1.5 billion shekels (roughly $250 million). Approximately $176 million will be given directly to the evacuees and an additional $66 million will be given to owners of private businesses, while the remaining sum will be allocated to finance the government's pullout-related expenses, mainly those of the defense, agriculture and housing ministries.

So far, the state has spent almost $400 million on disengagement, $240 million of which was the budget of security forces while $176 million was compensation for the evacuees.

On September 7, the disengagement cabinet also approved a regulation enabling those who did not leave by midnight August 14 - when Gaza was closed to Israelis - to receive their full compensation, even though they waited until the IDF evacuated them. Prior to the implementation of the disengagement, the government said that those who would not leave of their own free will would lose 30 percent in special compensation payments.

In April 2007, a ministerial committee approved the addition of nearly $125 million to the compensation budget for families evacuated from Gush Katif and northern Samaria.

According to a study commissioned on behalf of the Knesset lobby for the Jews from Gaza, 85 percent of the evacuees have yet to be relocated to permanent housing, approximately one-third of the employable ex-Gazans are out of work and about one-quarter rely on state welfare bodies. Some of the problems are related to the insistence by former settlers who insisted on relocating with their original communities, which has made it more difficult to resettle them.