Netanyahu Pushes for Land Reform - Privatization for the People
Residential and commercial buildings in Israel are all built on leased land. This is going to change for the first time in 100+ years (N. Tel Aviv apartment buildings / © 2009)Last week the Israeli Knesset voted to approve a land reform act. The law changes an old practice which the state owned the land in Israel. Most of the land in Israel was bought by the Jewish National Fund or appropriated by the state. Very little was transferred to individuals or organizations, today all state land is leased out to individuals and organizations. The law enables the state of Israel to sell 5% of the land to individuals, companies and organizations. For the first time in many parts of the country individuals will be able to own the land their homes or apartments sit on. The driving force here is the difficulty of having any building improvement approved by the Israel Land Trust (Minhal Mekarke'ei Israel), a government agency managing the land and leases. It will also ease new construction specially commercial and industrial construction in none urban locations. Strictly speaking any major changes to building on Israel state land needs the government's approval. The joke goes that to have a balcony closed you need to wait two years and even then you will not have your plan approved as you wanted. New construction approval is so difficult it has become a political game. Only large companies have been able to build regularly and in any significant scale.[see Ha'aretz]
Netanyahu is taking the credit for this law. He has an image of a strong business promoter, that is a good image to right now. In reality land reform has been an issue debated by different administrations for decades. It is true that Netanyahu pushed hard here, maybe even bullied a little. The core issue is who should own the land in Israel. Should public organizations and the state? or individuals and companies? Today 90% of the land is publicly owned by the state and the Jewish National Fund (JNF) [see article]. The liberal privatization side of the argument, Netanyahu's side, says that Israel simply needs to move forward. Without private land ownership the country is held back to ideas going back to the European middle ages. Business and industry must own land to invest in Israel. The same is true for developers and individual builders. People must own their own land to care and make a long term commitment. Jews as residents in Israel, going back more than 100 years, already have 4th and 5th generation families. Jews are being denied land ownership and ability to build a personal legacy. This is specially difficult to explain to foreigners who want to invest and leave a legacy to their children. Jews from around the world should be able to buy homes in Israel with the hope of their children eventually living in Israel. The same is true with foreign investors. How could you tell an international company that they can only build a factory on leased land? (I use 'Jews' because for Muslims and Christians the issue is different).
On the non-privatization side stand the labor party [see JPost], opposition parties [see YNet], religious parties and organizations and even the greens. The older socialist view worried about wealthy individuals and companies buying up all the available land. This would leave middle and lower class families without the ability to buy their own private apartments, relegating generations to become renters. Zionist, socialist and environmental organizations point out how successful Israel has been with state and JNF owned land structure. There is truth to this argument, specially when comparing Israel to almost every country which declared independence in the last 100 years. Arguments can be made either way, but over the years, clearly state owned leased land is certainly confusing and causes difficulties. Clearly what we have today is not practical, and if you can say anything about Israelis, they are practical.
As it is written, the land reform law will allow the sale of 5% in the state's holdings. Only about 1.5% of the state's land is in residential and commercial zones. Like all political decisions, the Knesset allocated sales of land in medium and low-income residential areas (apartments). Obviously as an experiment the law was written to influence public opinion as much as to ease the life of the average Israeli. As in every political first-step this is an experiment. Let's hope it succeeds and as Thomas Jefferson said about democracy:
"I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master."
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