During 2005-2009 the Israel Land Administration (ILA) Provided the Arabic Community with only 21% of its Needed Land for Housing Purposes

 

In a study conducted by ACAP, it was found that during the years 2005-2009 the Arab citizens needed approximately 55,000 housing units to meet their need, and the Jewish citizens needed around 217,000 housing units.

 

The ILA (the Israel Land Administration) has provided the Arabs with only 21% of the needed land during these years, while for the Jews it provided around 63% of the needed land.

 

Study's Background

The ILA publishes tenders to market lands for housing all over the country, including in Arab towns.  ACAP continuously monitors these tenders to keep track of them and their details.

 

The ILA markets housing land in two different ways:  (1) by announcing to the public the lands that are planned to be marketed in various towns through public tenders, in which the ILA determines the conditions that the applicants must meet in order for them to be eligible to participate; and (2) by assigning land to people who are interested without a public tender, but those people must be approved by an admission committee which is formed especially for this purpose (this procedure is very common in Jewish towns and in the Kibbutz.)

 

The information and data that ACAP has is regarding the first way, since the ILA doesn't publish any announcement or details regarding the second.

 

The details that appear in the tenders announcement

The announcement on tenders to market a land contains information on key issues including: the town, type of building that is permitted to be built on the specified land (housing, commercial, industrial etc.), the nature of the residential building (high or low density building), the number of the offered lands and their area, the number of housing units that are allowed to be built on a single land, the requirements that the applicants must meet in order to be eligible, and other details which are relevant to this issue.

 

Below is a summary of the tenders published by the ILA in general through the years 2005 – 2009 and some important notes about it.

 

 

 

Graph No.1 shows the amount of land that the Arabs acquire for housing purposes through the ILA

Graph No.1 shows the low percentage of land marketed to the Arab citizens. It should be mentioned that in 2006 there was a spike in the number of housing units marketed in Israel, but the situation for the Arab citizens didn't change.   Apparently this was due to the disengagement plan from the Gaza strip in which settlers were removed from the strip and were housed inside the green line.

 

Graph No.2 compares the percentage of Arabs in the country with the percentage of land that is allocated to them

Although the Arabs are 18% of the population of Israel, only 5% of the land was allocated to them by the ILA in the years 2004, 2005, 2006. The percentage rises to 12-13% in the years 2007 and 2008, however, drops again to around 6% in 2009.

 

Graph No. 3 compares the allocation of the land marketed to Arabs between members of the security forces and the general public.

The study also revealed that the issue doesn't involve only discrimination of land allocation between Arabs and Jews but allocates higher percentages of land to Arab members of the security forces way beyond their percentage in the Arabic community.

 

Graph No.4 shows the land allocated to Arabs for housing, industrial, commercial and tourism purposes

The study also showed that the ILA allocates a marginal amount of land for industrial, commercial and tourism purposes for Arabs.  This shows that these areas are low priority for the ILA when it comes to the Arab population.