The Prime Minister intends to condition the transfer of budgets to the Arab sector on the promotion of dense construction plans, but he forgets that the housing problem in Arab municipalities stems mainly from discrimination in the allocation of land for construction.
PM Benjamin Netanyahu intends to set conditions for the transfer of the five year plan budgets for narrowing the gaps in Arab municipalities, and one of these conditions is a demand that the Arab municipalities promote plans for dense construction and fight violations of the planning and building laws. The housing problem in the Arab communities is complex, but at its core, it stems from a shortage of State lands. Therefore, Netanyahu’s demand is a cynical one, placing the responsibility for the crisis created by the State on the shoulders of the Arabs.
The Israeli Land Authority and the Ministry of Housing are taking vigorous action to market for construction any zoned piece of land due to the housing crisis, but in Arab communities there are simply no State lands for this purpose. According to the Arab Centre for Alternative Planning (ACAP), Arab municipalities have just 3.4% of State lands, while 17% of Israeli citizens reside there. This situation has hardly changed since the foundation of the state of Israel.
Yesterday, the Ministry of Finance published the data regarding the marketing of State land for construction purposes in 2015. According to the data, land for the construction of 34,000 housing units was marketed last year, and out of this total amount, land for the construction of just 1,100 housing units was marketed in Arab municipalities. The situation was no better in previous years. According to Adalah – The Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, in 2014, the Israel Land Authority published tender calls for the construction of 38,261 apartments in Jewish municipalities, in comparison to just 1,844 in Arab ones.
So far, the State has not done much to promote the dense construction in Arab municipalities, even though the authority which is supposed to approve such plans is the regional planning committees – all of these being State institutions subordinate to the Planning Administration at the Ministry of Finance. “Planning decisions are not made at all by the Arab municipalities, but by the planning committees,” says Dr. Hanna Sweid, founder of ACAP.
Another problem is that most of the dense construction plans apply to private lands. As a result of legal difficulties in the unification and redistribution plans, in addition to the problem of land owners who prefer not to fulfil their construction rights, the fulfilment rate for these plans is 50%. It follows that if one wants dense construction in Arab municipalities, there is no way of avoiding the inclusion of State lands to the municipal areas of Arab local councils. When the State is the entrepreneur, things are different. Even Housing Minister Galant admitted this two months ago in response to a parliamentary query submitted by MK Yusef Jabareen from the United List, saying: “The real way to invest an effort in the Arab sector is by examining the municipalities’ boundaries of jurisdiction, adding State-owned lands on their margins and establishing housing solutions initiated by the State on State-owned land.”
Six months ago, the 120 day team for solving the housing problems in the Arab sector recommended the establishment of a permanent Boundaries Committee which will coordinate and submit recommendations to the Minister of Interior – who has the authority to instruct changes in boundaries. The government has endorsed the team’s recommendations, but this recommendation has been shelved due to objections by the Minister of Interior at the time, Silvan Shalom. It is assumed that Aryeh Derii from the Shas party will replace Shalom in this position, and this does not bode well for the plans from the viewpoint of Israeli Arabs, since the previous Shas representative at the Ministry of Interior, Eli Yishai, refused to expand the boundaries of Arab municipalities for ideological reasons.
This is a translation of ‘The State is Dodging its Responsibility for the Housing Crisis in the Arab Sector’, The Calcalist, January 5, 2016. Translation by Ofer Neiman.