Israel
Lands - Privatization or National Ownership?
Israel
is one of the only democratic, advanced-economy
countries where state or quasi-state agencies
own the vast majority of the land area. An
estimated 93 percent of the country’s
total land area (excluding the occupied areas
of the West Bank and Gaza) is owned by the
state or by quasi-state agencies. Furthermore,
Article 1 of Basic
Law: Israel Lands stipulates that:
The
ownership of Israel lands … shall not be transferred
either by sale or in any other manner.
A combination of factors – Israel’s small
geographic size; its growing population and commitment
to absorption of immigration; its official “nation-building” Zionist
ideology; and its security needs – has encouraged
Israeli policymakers to retain the principle of national
ownership and to harness land policies in order to
achieve national goals. Today, however, these ideological
justifications are no longer immune from criticism,
as the Committee discussions demonstrated.
Israel Lands
“Israel lands,” as defined in Basic Law:
Israel Lands (of 1960) consists of lands owned by the
following three bodies: the State of Israel, the Jewish
National Fund (JNF) and the Development Authority.
The lands owned by the state are the lands that were
owned by the British
Mandate over Palestine until 1948.
These lands constitute about 75 percent of all Israel
lands.
The JNF is a nonprofit worldwide organization established
at the end of the nineteenth century as part of the Zionist movement.
Its major goal was to purchase land from local landowners
for the settlement of Jews. Until the early 1960’s,
the JNF managed its own land holdings. In 1960, it
signed a treaty with the State
of Israel whereby
it agreed to place its land holdings, without transferring
title, under the administration of the Israel Lands
Administration and its governing body – the
Israel Lands Council. The JNF appoints half (less
one) of the members of the Council, while the government
appoints the other half (plus one). JNF lands constitute
about 13 percent of the total of Israel lands.
Viewing itself as a custodian of land for the Jewish
people, the JNF incorporated into the treaty with the
State of Israel a further and highly controversial
condition: the Israel Lands Administration would be
allowed to lease JNF land to Jewish people only, whether
to those living in Israel or residing abroad. Theprohibition
on Arab Israelies to buy or lease land in certain areas
that were designated for Jews only was challenged at
the Supreme
Court that decided in the year 2000, in
the landmark case of Kaadan, was discriminatory and
impermissible. Allocation of State Lands to the Jewish
Agency for the Settlement of Jews only, the Court decided,
was illegal, due to the discrimination of citizens
on the basis of religion and nationality. The values
of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, the Court
declared, prohibit discrimination in the allocation
of lands between Jews and non-Jews. Read
More.
The third source of national land pertains to the remaining
12 percent, the most politically sensitive type of
national land. A statutory body established in 1950,
the Development Authority, received its holdings from
the Custodian of Absentee Property, a governmental
body that took charge of land owned mostly by Arab
residents who left or were expelled from their place
of residence during the 1948-9 war. Most of these lands
have been leased or sold.
The Rationales for National Ownership of Land
During Israel’s incipient years, and still to
some extent today, public land ownership was seen as
a key instrument for achieving the country’s
territorial and demographic stabilization. In the years
following the 1948
War of Independence, Israel sought
to establish its legitimate standing within its international
borders, some of which were (and still are) officially
only armistice lines. This agenda yielded a strong
focus on population distribution as widely as possible
to the Galilee in the north and the Negev desert in
the south. The goal was to create a Jewish presence
in most areas of the country. State control of land
ownership was one of the major tools that enabled the
achievement of population distribution and Jewish presence
goals.
Today, the ideological basis for national ownership
of the land is receding, and the near-monopoly of the
Israel Lands Administration no longer is immune from
challenge. Several legal experts that testified before
the Committee cast doubt on the desirability of national
ownership.
Experts mentioned three main considerations against
the principle of national ownership of land. First,
even though the Basic Law prohibits transfer of ownership,
the situation de-facto is that the rights granted
to leaseholders under the current Israeli leasehold
system closely resemble full property rights. Israeli
citizens and the Israeli market treat leased lands
as owned by the leaseholders. Thus, the control of
the state in leased lands is severely limited, pragmatically
and legally.
Second, legal experts pointed out that there are various
ways through which the government can exercise control
over the uses of land in the state, most importantly
through planning and zoning laws. State ownership is
not needed in order to control land development. Even
the goal of protecting land from being sold to aliens
can be obtained through laws specifically restricting
land transactions of private parties, instead of national
ownership of all lands.
Third, experts pointed out the inefficiency of the
state machinery that manages Israel lands and questioned
the necessity of the large and heavy bureaucracy of
the Israel Lands Administration.
Three main alternative proposals
were made. First, to keep the current arrangement,
and solve any immediate problems within the exisitng
system; Second, to radically reform the law and abolish
the comprehensive national ownership; and third,
to keep national ownership but regulate it not in
the constituion but in ordinary legislation, which
will then allow future parliaments to introduce changes
relatively easily.
Sources: Constitution
for Israel Project |