Israel Land Authority

The ILA's legal basis rests primarily on two laws passed by the Knesset in 1960. Basic Law: Israel Lands, adopted on July 19, 1960, defines the covered lands as real estate belonging to the State of Israel, the Development Authority, or Keren Kayemet Le-Israel (the Jewish National Fund, JNF).[7] The law prohibits transferring ownership of those lands "either by sale or in any other manner," while permitting exceptions for categories of real estate and transactions prescribed by law.[7] It defines "lands" broadly to include land, houses, buildings, and anything permanently fixed to the ground.[7]

The companion Israel Lands Administration Law of 1960 created the administrative body responsible for managing these holdings and established the Israel Lands Council as its governing authority.[4] The Council's defined duties were to set the land policy the Administration was to follow, supervise the Administration, and approve its draft budget.[4] From the outset, the Administration was constituted as a body established by law and made subject to Supreme Court judicial review and administrative-law rules.[4]

In 1960, the JNF agreed to place its holdings under the administration of the Israel Lands Administration without transferring ownership title.[5] Under the arrangement, the JNF appointed half the Council's members minus one, while the government appointed the remaining half plus one.[5] An agreement signed on August 1, 1960 set up a joint authority to administer government and JNF holdings, with a council initially composed of seven government and six JNF representatives.[8] The arrangement also addressed development policy: state land was to be administered according to law, while KKL land was to be administered in accordance with KKL's own memorandum and articles of association.[4] Control over rural land development and afforestation was placed with a KKL body called the Land Development Authority, distinct from the statutory Development Authority that held former absentee property.[4]

The Israel Lands Administration was formed under legislation enacted in 1960; published accounts variously date its establishment to 1960 or 1961.[1][9] From its inception, the Administration managed land owned by the state, the JNF, and the Development Authority, leasing it for industry, commerce, housing, and especially agriculture.[9] The Development Authority, established in 1950, received its initial holdings from the Custodian of Absentee Property, which had taken charge of property owned mostly by Arab residents who left or were expelled during the 1948–49 War of Independence; most of the Authority's holdings have since been leased or sold.[5]

The formative post-1948 land policy centralized control over land in state and Jewish institutions.[10] National land ownership was conceived as a policy tool linked to Israel's small size, population growth, absorption of immigration, nation-building ideology, and security needs.[5] After the War of Independence, policymakers sought to distribute population across the Galilee and Negev and to establish a Jewish presence in most areas, and state control of land was one instrument used toward those aims.[5]

In August 1973, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan proposed that the ILA acquire land in the territories for settlement, private and public factories, and possible future land exchanges.[11] Following the rejection of separate proposals by Dayan and Israel Galili, Galili combined them into a document submitted on September 3, 1973.[11] The combined document's eleventh principle proposed using ILA acquisitions, government and absentee lands, land exchanges, and agreements with residents to increase land designated for existing and planned settlements; the twelfth principle assigned approval authority to a ministerial committee and restricted acquisitions to "constructive enterprises" rather than speculation.[11] The broader proposals were rejected and were not fully implemented.[11]

The year 2005 brought the first major post-founding reform effort. The government approved recommendations by the Gadish committee for reform of the Israel Land Administration, including granting ownership to certain lessees of municipal residential land who had capitalized their rights, while excluding shared and community areas in moshavim and kibbutzim.[12] The recommendations also aimed to eliminate a backlog of land-arrangement and rights-registration proceedings affecting 400,000 housing units.[12]

A larger transformation began in 2009. On August 3, 2009, Amendment No. 7 to the Israel Land Administration Law was enacted as part of a reform establishing the Administration as a governmental authority.[13] The body was renamed the Israel Land Authority, with the change completed in the Knesset on August 1, 2011 and the successor Authority operating from March 1, 2013.[1][3] The stated aims included improving public service and access, expanding land reserves for housing, reducing land costs and bureaucracy, supporting economic growth, and improving implementation of government policy.[13]

The ILA has been described as administering 93 percent of the country's public lands.[14] Estimates of the broader portfolio range from approximately 90 to 93 percent of Israel's total land area, with one Globes overview placing it at approximately 22 million dunams.[1][2] The portfolio is divided among three owners: the State of Israel, the JNF, and the Development Authority.[7] In one breakdown, state holdings account for approximately 75 percent, JNF holdings approximately 13 percent, and Development Authority holdings the remaining 12 percent of Israel lands.[5] An earlier estimate by Alexander Safian, citing the Israeli Government Press Office as of May 22, 1997, placed the government share at 80.4 percent, the JNF share at 13.1 percent, and private holdings at 6.5 percent, calculating that the ILA administered 93.5 percent.[15]

A critical distinction runs through all of these figures: the ILA's administration of JNF land does not confer ownership over it.[15] JNF land remains JNF-owned even when managed by the Authority, and the JNF retains organizational rules governing how that land may be used and leased.[4] State land and Development Authority land are governed by different legal rules.

Because state and quasi-state agencies collectively own the overwhelming majority of the land, roughly 93 percent of the country has been described as public domain.[2] Most Israelis using land for residential, business, or agricultural purposes accordingly lease it from the government on long-term leases, with many rights structured as 49- or 98-year leases, rather than holding it in fee simple.[6][13] The Government of Israel's 2009 financial statements noted that the assets presented in those statements did not include "all State lands," meaning the reported financial balances did not constitute a complete valuation of state land despite the ILA's responsibility for managing it.[16]

The Israel Land Council is the policymaking and supervisory body for the Authority.[1] It determines the land policy under which the lands are managed, supervises the Authority, and approves its budget.[1] The Council has between 18 and 26 members and is chaired by the Minister of Construction and Housing.[1] The Minister of Agriculture has also chaired the Council at different points in the body's history.[17] The Council's composition has varied: in 2013 it had nine members representing government ministries and the JNF, while a 2018 account described six JNF representatives among 14 members.[18][19]

The Authority's main areas of operational activity include managing its land inventory, creating reserves of publicly owned land for national purposes, marketing and allocating land for different uses, handling lessees and residents, and overseeing land use.[1] The ILA is responsible for determining land use in accordance with resolutions of the Israel Lands Council and allocating land to urban, agricultural, and industrial developers.[17]

Resident and lessee interactions with the Authority are now partly digital. Through the government's My ILA service, users can securely view property-rights details and documents, submit inquiries, and perform selected online transactions.[20] Listed services include authorizing rights, requesting transfers of land rights for residential, employment, and public-institution properties, obtaining property information, undertaking mortgage registration, and viewing tenders in which the user participated.[20]

The 2009 reform represented the most significant restructuring of Israeli land administration since the founding legislation. The government approved the reform in July 2009, following an initiative by the Prime Minister's Office and the Ministry of Housing, and it replaced the Israel Lands Administration with the Israel Land Authority.[21] The new body's central work was described as allocating and marketing land according to the economy's needs and safeguarding Israel's lands, while leaving planning and development functions to others except for large plans and national projects.[21]

The reform's most consequential provision allowed land managed by the ILA to be conveyed to lessees, who could then act regarding the property as legal owners.[13] This ownership-transfer element applied to municipal land, including housing and commercial uses, and was generally without additional payment.[13] The transfer was optional—lessees could remain in their existing legal status—and the 2011 government report characterized the existing leasing procedure as complicated, inefficient, and expensive.[13] The first phase of proposed ownership transfers, planned through 2014, covered approximately 400,000 dunams, representing about two percent of state land.[21] Even after the reform, the great majority of land was to remain owned by the state, the Development Authority, and the JNF.[21]

The State Department's 2009 human-rights report characterized the new law as instituting "broad land privatization," permitting land exchanges between the state and the JNF, and allowing allocations through "admissions committee" mechanisms.[22] It also described the new Land Authority Council as giving JNF representatives decisive weight.[22]

Amendment No. 7 also authorized the government to issue an order reducing the number of JNF representatives on the ILA council, as one element of the organizational reform.[13] The 2009 reform set annual marketing targets for 2010–11 of land for 25,000 housing units through tenders plus land for another 10,000 units through tender exemptions.[23] In practice, the Administration in 2010 published tenders for 26,050 housing units and, counting land marketed through exemptions, marketed land for 34,253 units overall.[23] In 2024, the Authority published land for 113,197 housing units for marketing through tenders and tender exemptions.[24]

The ILA allocates and markets state land, sets land prices, and offers lots through tenders open to competitive bidding.[25] Its appraisals are influenced by prices achieved in previous tenders, a pricing dynamic that the BESA Center argues can make rural lots unaffordable and constrain rural development.[25] In Bethlehem of Galilee, for example, quarter-dunam lots were offered to community members at a starting price of one million shekels, while larger lots in the nearby Bedouin villages of Beit Zarzir and Ka'abiyye were offered for less than a tenth of that price.[25]

The tension between the ILA's market-oriented land pricing and the goals of rural settlement has been articulated by local leaders. Jordan Valley Regional Council head Idan Grinbaum quoted ILA official Yanki Koyent in the context of a discussion about Kibbutz HaOn: "My task is not to build communities and not to fulfill the goal of settlement. My task is to sell state land to the highest bidder."[25]

The Authority's tasks extend beyond commercial tendering. They include allocating land for housing, affordable and public housing, employment areas, and open spaces; assisting with land expropriation when necessary; advancing registration of rights in the Land Registry; and providing services to people holding rights in the lands it manages.[3] The ILA also manages community-level allocations: Israel Lands Council Directive No. 1195, approved in March 2010, updated criteria for accepting candidates seeking lease rights in agricultural and communal localities and provided an appeal mechanism.[13]

The legal and practical relationship between state administration and JNF ownership has generated sustained legal and policy debate. JNF statutes prohibit the sale or lease of its land to non-Jews.[2] As of 2005, the ILA administered both public land—which could only be leased—and JNF land subject to those JNF restrictions.[2] Legal analysis from 1992 noted that there were no legal impediments to leasing non-KKL state or Development Authority land to non-Jews, and argued that the principle of equality binding public authorities meant the Administration could not refuse to lease such land on that basis.[4] The same analysis identified a legal tension between administering KKL land under its organizational rules and the general duties of a public body, a question the report noted had not yet been decided by an Israeli court at that time.[4]

Over subsequent decades, several legal interventions reshaped access policy. In January 2005, the attorney general ruled that the government could not discriminate against Israeli Arabs in marketing or allocating land it managed, including land administered for the JNF, and said the government should compensate the JNF with an equivalent parcel when a non-Jewish citizen won a tender for JNF land.[2] On June 7, 2009, the ILA and JNF agreed on a set of principles, approved by the JNF general assembly on June 23, under which the ILA could transfer JNF land in central Israel to any person without discrimination, while the JNF would receive land in the Negev and Galilee in exchange.[13] The government presented this land-rotation arrangement as intended to respect both equality and the JNF's aims, though an administrative petition was filed against the procedure for approving the agreement.[13]

The ILA continued to operate in accordance with the Supreme Court's ruling in the Kaadan case, under which equality applies to state allocation of real estate.[13] In practice, Arab/Palestinian citizens could bid on JNF land through ILA tenders, but when such a citizen won a bid, the ILA would grant the JNF another parcel.[19] An increasing number of Arab/Palestinian citizens in Jerusalem had acquired property on ILA-owned land by 2023, even as restrictions continued to limit the ability of Muslim and Christian Jerusalem residents who were not Israeli citizens to purchase property built on state land.[14]

The Supreme Court's 2000 ruling in Kaadan v. Katzir marked a turning point in the legal framework governing ILA allocations. The Court held that the state could not allocate state land in ways that discriminate between Jews and non-Jews.[10] The Court reasoned that the values of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state prohibit discrimination between Jews and non-Jews in allocating land.[5] The ruling intensified debate between competing visions of how the land regime should balance Jewish national purposes and democratic equality.[10]

The practical follow-through in the Kaadan family's own case was gradual. After Katzir declined to provide the Israeli-Arab family title to a plot, the family petitioned again in September 2003 to compel implementation of the 2000 ruling.[2] The ILA allocated a plot to the family in May 2004, and they signed a contract on December 19, 2004, enabling them to begin building their house.[2]

In 2018, a further legal ruling addressed the composition of the ILA Council. The Supreme Court ruled that the ILA Executive Council must include an Arab, Druze, or Circassian member to prevent discrimination against non-Jews.[14] That same year, a petition by human-rights organizations challenged the requirement that six of the 14 ILA Council members be JNF representatives; the Supreme Court rejected the petition on June 21, 2018, ruling that JNF representatives, like all other Council members, were expected to uphold equality.[19] Despite the membership ruling, no Arab/Palestinian, Druze, or Circassian member sat on the Executive Council at the end of 2023.[14]

A targeted program offered preferential access for a specific population: the ILA and the Bedouin Authority stated that they gave priority to Bedouin veteran soldiers seeking to purchase plots, with the aim of encouraging military recruitment.[14] In a tender in Rahat, Bedouin veterans received first priority in receiving and selecting plots, at a 70 percent discount.[26]

State control over land has been integral to Israel's approach to immigration absorption and national development since 1948. With state and quasi-state bodies holding the overwhelming majority of the land, the ILA effectively functions as a gatekeeper to the country's most basic resource.[1] National land ownership was justified by policymakers on grounds of Israel's small geographic size, rapid population growth, the need to absorb large-scale Jewish immigration, and the requirements of national security.[5]

The ILA's land-marketing activities directly shape the housing market. Government policy set targets of land for 25,000 to 35,000 housing units per year in the early 2010s, while in 2024 the Authority published land for more than 113,000 units during the year.[23][24] Because construction typically begins two to three years after a successful tender, the Authority's marketing figures have significant downstream effects on housing supply.[23]

Legal experts have raised structural criticisms of the comprehensive national ownership model. Critics have argued that leasehold rights already resemble ownership in practice, that planning and zoning regulation can achieve land-use goals without public ownership, and that the land-management bureaucracy may be inefficient.[5] Alternative proposals discussed in public debate include retaining the current system, abolishing comprehensive national ownership, or grounding the national ownership regime in ordinary rather than constitutional legislation.[5] The 2009 reform's partial privatization—conveying ownership of approximately 400,000 dunams to lessees, or roughly two percent of state land—was a partial response to those critiques without fundamentally altering the dominance of public land ownership.[21]

Several aspects of the ILA's structure and operation have been the subject of ongoing legal, political, and scholarly debate. The relationship between state administration of JNF land and the JNF's restrictions on non-Jewish access has generated recurring disputes over the organizational rules governing JNF property and the equality obligations of a public body.[4][13] Successive attorney general rulings, the 2009 ILA–JNF land-exchange agreement, and litigation over the agreement's approval process illustrate this continuing tension.[2][13]

Academic accounts of the land regime's historical development are divided along interpretive lines. Safian argues that state land is equally available to Jewish and Arab Israeli citizens; Kedar offers a critical account emphasizing the regime's national and demographic objectives, using the term "Judaization" to characterize the formative post-1948 policy.[10][15] These interpretations reflect competing assessments of the same institutional history.

The BESA Center has argued that the ILA's competitive tender pricing, benchmarked to prior tender results, creates affordability barriers in rural and community settings and may conflict with settlement and rural-development goals.[25] At the end of 2023, the ILA Executive Council still lacked the Arab/Palestinian, Druze, or Circassian representation required by the 2018 Supreme Court ruling.[14] These gaps between legal requirements and reported administrative practice contribute to the contested character of the ILA's operations in politically sensitive areas.