Land and property laws in Israel are the property law component of Israeli law, providing the legal framework for the ownership and other in rem rights towards all forms of property in Israel, including real estate (land) and movable property. Besides tangible property, economic rights are also usually treated as property, in addition to being covered by the law of obligations.

Principles

The Jewish state was proclaimed on 14 May 1948 with its Declaration of Independence. The Provisional State Council's first legislative act was the "Law and Administration Ordinance of 1948", a reception statute. The act adopted all existing laws "with such modifications as may result from establishment of the State or its authorities." In respect of land law matters, Ottoman laws, as had been modified by British land law during the Mandate period, continued to apply. Most of these laws have been repealed by the last quarter of the 20th century.

Over time, a modern set of codificative statutes has been enacted. These are mostly a codification of common law norms, albeit with a notable continental influence. Chief among these are the Land Law, 1969 and the Movable Property Law, 1971. They are joined by a multitude of other legislative acts pertaining to property law, in addition to a highly detailed body of case law by the Supreme Court and lower courts. Some of the main tenets of Israeli property law are: In land law, a system of title registration (Torrens title) is in place, allowing any person to quickly retrieve (usually through the internet) a summary of ownership and other rights towards any parcel of land. The legal transfer of land is only effectuated when a deed is executed and registered in the (also known as Tabo or Tabu; ). Under the Torrens title system, the Land Registry serves as an absolute guarantee of the title, allowing for a relatively easy and safe negotiation of land transactions. As of 2016, about 4% of the country's land area is still registered under a pre-Torrens, deeds registration system. Private property rights enjoy a fairly strong protection from encroachment, both by other private parties and by the government. Even when eminent domain is utilized, the government almost universally has to compensate for the fair value of the land. While private ownership of land is common (mainly in urban areas), most of the land in Israel (over 90% of the land area) is in the ownership of either the State of Israel, the (), or the Jewish National Fund (JNF). According to Basic Law: Israel Lands, enacted in 1960, the land owned by these three bodies is administered by the Israel Land Authority (ILA). The land so owned is often leased to private persons, typically in a long-term lease for a period of 99 years. This creates a situation where, on the one hand, the land is privately held for most practical purposes; on the other hand, the ILA still wields a considerable bureaucratic power over citizens, particularly during the transfer of lease from one person to another, or various other procedures related to land use and registration, where the law requires consent or ongoing involvement by the ILA. Beginning in the first decade of the 21st century, the Knesset has enacted laws encouraging the full transfer of ownership, for no additional payment, from the ILA-represented bodies to the lessees, who thereby become owners. The most common type of housing in Israel is condominiums. The Land Law, 1969 details the legal structure of this type of property, including the rights of tenants among themselves (mainly in regard to common areas) and towards third parties. A contractual document, the by-laws (; ), is required to exist for every condominium; often, the common by-laws, provided as an appendix to the Land Law, 1969, are used, but many condominiums do have more detailed by-laws, agreed between apartment owners. The Land Law, 1969 enacts a "closed list" approach, listing five types of proprietary claims that may exist towards land: ownership, rental (including lease), mortgage, beneficial use and right of first refusal. However, in practice, other types of claims exist and are treated as equitable. In addition, a or caveat () is regularly placed in the Land Registry after a transaction is agreed upon and before its registration is completed. In many cases, due to various impediments to completing the registration, the warning note remains on the Land Registry for decades, commonly perceived as providing a sufficient protection to the acquirer's interests.

Overview In 1945, of the 26.4 million dunams (26,400 km²) of land in Mandatory Palestine, was either owned or held in indefinite lease by Arabs, by Jews, was public land and constituted the desertic Beersheba district (Negev). Of the 9.2 million dunams of land that was arable ( of the total land area), was owned or used by Arabs, by Jews and was public land.Village Statistics of 1945: A Classification of Land and Area ownership in Palestine By 1949, approximately 700,000 Palestinian Arabs had fled or been expelled from their lands and villages. Israel was now in control of some 20.5 million dunams (approx. 20,500 km²) or 78% of lands in what had been Mandatory Palestine: 8% (approx. 1,650 km²) were privately controlled by Jews, 6% (approx. 1,300 km²) by Arabs, with the remaining 86% being public land.Abu Sitta, Salman (2001): From Refugees to Citizens at Home. London: Palestine Land Society and Palestinian Return Centre, 2001. Land laws were passed to legalize changes to land ownership.Ruling Palestine, A History of the Legally Sanctioned Jewish-Israeli Seizure of Land and Housing in Palestine. Publishers: COHRE & BADIL, May 2005, p. 37.

As at 2007, the Israel Land Administration (ILA), which was established in 1960, manages 93% of Israel's land comprising 19,508 km² under the following laws and land policy. The remaining 7% of land is either privately owned or under the protection of religious authorities.

Basic Law: Israel lands (1960) states that all the lands owned by the state of Israel will remain in state ownership, and will not be sold or given to anyone, but allows for the Knesset to override that ban on privatization by legislation. Israel Lands Law (1960) details several exceptions to the basic law. Israel Land Administration Law (1960) describes the details of establishing and operating the Israel Land Administration.Israel Land Administration Law Covenant between the State of Israel and the World Zionist Organization (WZO), establishing the JNF (1960).Israel Land Administration. General Information

Thirteen percent of Israel's land belongs to the JNF, which is managed by the ILA.

Use of land in Israel usually means leasing rights from the ILA for a period of 49 or 98 years. Under Israeli law, the ILA cannot lease land to foreign nationals, which includes Palestinian residents of Jerusalem who have identity cards but are not citizens of Israel. In practice, foreigners may be allowed to lease if they show that they would qualify as Jewish under the Law of Return.

History

Ottoman era The Ottoman Empire embarked on a systematic land reform program in the second half of the 19th century. Two of the new laws were the 1858 land registration law and the 1873 land emancipation act. Prior to 1858, land in Palestine, then a part of the Ottoman Empire since 1516, was cultivated or occupied mainly by subsistence farmers. Land ownership was regulated by people living on the land according to customs and traditions. Usually, land was communally owned by village residents, though land could be owned by individuals or families.Ottoman Land Registration Law as a Contributing Factor in the Israeli-Arab Conflict , Jon-Jay Tilsen, Congregation Beth El–Keser Israel (retrieved August 14, 2006)

The Ottoman Land Code of 1858 required land owners to register ownership. The reasons behind the law were twofold: (1) to increase tax revenue, and (2) to enable the government exercise greater state control over the area. However, many farmers did not register their claims, for several reasons: for example, land owners were subject to military service in the Ottoman Army, there was general opposition to official regulations from the Ottoman Empire, and to evade payment of taxes and registration fees to the Ottoman Empire.

The registration process itself was open to falsification and manipulation. Land collectively owned by village residents ended up being registered to one villager, and merchants and local Ottoman administrators took the opportunity to register large areas of land in their own name. The result was that land became registered to people who had never lived on the land; while the subsistence farmers, having lived there for generations, retained possession, but became tenants of absentee owners.

The 1873 land emancipation act gave Jews the right to own land in Palestine under their own name. This 1873 secular land reform/civil rights law was popularly confused with a religious law and it was held as a "humiliation to Islam that Jews should own a part of the Muslim Ummah". The confusion between religious and secular law made the laws (ended in 1873) against Jewish ownership of land 'religious laws'.

Over the course of the next decades land became increasingly concentrated on fewer hands; tenant farmers continued to work on the land, giving landlords a share of the harvest. This led to both an increased level of Palestinian nationalism as well as civil unrest.Palestinian Private Property Rights in Israel and the Occupied Territories Stacy Howlett, Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law (Volume 34 number 1, January 2001, retrieved August 14, 2006) At the same time, the area witnessed an increased flow of Jewish immigrants who did not restrict themselves to the cities where their concentration offered some protection from persecution. These Jews came hoping to create a new future in what they regarded as the homeland of their ancestors. Organizations created to aid Jewish settlement in Palestine bought land from Arab and absentee landowners.

British Mandate World War I and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire led to British control over the area in 1917, followed by the creation of the Mandate for Palestine by the League of Nations in 1922, which remained in effect until the establishment of Israel in 1948. During this period several new land laws were introduced, including The Land Transfer Ordinance of 1920, The Correction of Land Registers Ordinance of 1926 and The Land Settlement Ordinance of 1928.Kenneth W. Stein, "The Land Question in Palestine, 1917-1939" (1987), University of North Carolina Press, (excerpts: )

It was the policy of the WZO to encourage Jewish acquisition of land in Palestine for Jewish settlement. For that purpose, the Fifth Zionist Congress (1901) set up the JNF to buy suitable land. The rules of the JNF forbade it from selling the land it acquired, but to lease it. Land owned by the JNF was leased to kibbutzim and other Jewish settlements on long-term leases. At the end of 1935, JNF held 89,500 acres (362 km²) of land housing 108 Jewish communities. In 1939, 10% of the Jewish population of the British Mandate of Palestine lived on JNF land. JNF holdings by the end of the British Mandate period amounted to 936 km².Walter Lehn, The Jewish National Fund, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 3, No. 4. (Summer, 1974), pp. 74-96. By 1948, the JNF owned 54% of the land held by Jews in the region,Donald H. Akenson. "God's Peoples"; Cornell University Press, 1992, p.168 or a bit less than 4% of the land in Palestine (excluding Transjordan).Dan Leon."The Jewish National Fund: How the Land Was 'Redeemed': The JNF's historical concept of exclusively Jewish land is wholly anachronistic"; Palestine-Israel Journal, Vol 12 No. 4 & Vol 13 No. 1, 05/06 /