Land day

Haaretz 3/7/2008 By Shuki Sadeh

Anyone who wants to fully understand the changes undergone by Israeli society since the establishment of the state, and even beforehand, need not visit a museum or watch some documentary series on television. It is sufficient to peruse the lawsuit that has been under deliberation for the past four years by the Petah Tikva District Court, which is due to hand down a verdict in the near future. The lawsuit is really the story of the Borochov neighborhood in Givatayim, which begins with a group of laborers agreeing to live together in a way that would benefit everyone, and ends with real-estate deals and a demand that the state return money to its citizens.

The six plaintiffs are descendants of the pioneering laborers who established the neighborhood. They claim that the Israel Lands Administration (ILA) is exploiting them ruthlessly, and has illegally charged them a total of NIS 7 million as a condition for approving construction on plots that they own - even though in the original contracts their families signed, there was no obligation to pay for building permits.

David Cohen, the lawyer representing the plaintiffs, explains that if the suit is upheld by the court, the residents of Borochov and similar, veteran neighborhoods in other parts of the country will be able to demand that the ILA return money they paid in the past, and could amount to as much as NIS 5 billion.

Borochov, the first such workers' neighborhood established in the country, was set up in 1922 by a group headed by David Schneiderman, who had arrived during the Second Aliyah (wave of immigration). Schneiderman, who tried to acquire land in various areas in the central region of the country (among others, near Bat Yam and Holon) was ultimately successful in locating 300 dunams (or 75 acres), which at the time were part of Ir Haganim - the Ramat Gan of today. Every one of the 22 settlers bought 2.5 dunams, for which they paid 300 liras upon signing the contract, and another 1,000 liras after three months. Later on, another 70 families joined the group, and they received smaller plots.

The lawsuit is full of stories from the pioneering days of the 1920s when the settlers worked as construction laborers in Tel Aviv, or as guards or even sanitation workers in British military camps, to be able to pay back the loans they had taken for buying the land. Even though they bought the plots using their own private savings, the settlers decided of their own initiative to transfer their property collectively to the Jewish National Fund (JNF), which at that time organized Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel. This voluntary transfer of privately purchased land was also evident in other parts of the country - in towns, moshavim and kibbutzim.

"Our parents were socialists. As they saw it, it was forbidden for them to own real estate and therefore they handed this land over to the JNF," explains Ran Aldema, who still lives in the neighborhood his father helped to establish. Because of this ideology, people who refused to hand over their plots for national ownership were not allowed to live in the neighborhood: "We are very careful when accepting members ... because we care about the basic precept of nationalization, which is not agreeable to everyone," the residents' committee of the Borochov neighborhood wrote in a letter to the JNF headquarters in 1924 - a letter that is quoted in the current lawsuit.

This ideology was superseded by more practical interests, such as real estate, and members of the second generation of residents started to make "combination" deals: Developers were allowed to build on the available plots and to sell some of the apartments in the buildings they completed, while handing over - in return - the remaining apartments to the land owners. When a new structure was erected, the owners were asked to pay higher monthly leasing fees in accordance with the size of the built-up area.

Starting in 1987, the rules of the game changed. Land owners who wanted to strike a combination deal were asked to pay a permit fee of between $100,000 and $300,000 to the ILA, which administered the JNF properties. The owners did not realize at first that people who had closed similar deals in the past were not required to pay such fees, and therefore did not object to the ILA's demand. Only later did they understand this and begin to examine the matter more closely.

The property owners discovered that for the last 20 years, the ILA had asked them to sign new leases, which included a clause stating that any new building on their property was conditional upon payment of a fee determined by the size of the land. In the lawsuit they submitted to the court, the owners claimed they did not know that the demand for paying a fee was not included in their original contracts. They were sure that the signature was merely a technical matter and did not imagine that the ILA would change the terms of the agreement for the worse.

Says Eli Goldstein, the son of the late Avraham Goldstein, who was one of the initiators of the lawsuit: "I assume that many other good people did not read the fine print. They were not naive, but did not foresee where this would lead. They did not imagine that someone would demand a payment during the construction work. The founders paid a full price for the land and donated it. But wonder of wonders! When it was time for realization, the ILA wanted a fee."

"The ILA is behaving aggressively and exploiting its power while disregarding its public obligations in a way that shows a lack of bona fide intentions and transparency," attorney Cohen wrote, summing up the plaintiffs' grievances. He also quoted remarks made at a conference of ILA legal advisers in November 1998: They stated that lessees with whom a new contract is signed should be able to enjoy the conditions of the original contract. "It is regrettable that the legal advisers did not take it a step further as could be expected of them - that is, to trace the lessees from whom permit fees were stolen in an illegal and indecent fashion, and to return the money stolen from them," the lawsuit says.

'Getting rich?'

The ILA claims, for its part, that the matter is no longer legally relevant because the new contracts were signed between 10 and 15 years ago. The plaintiffs counter that that claim is merely the ILA's way of shaking off responsibility, and say the real facts became clear to them only a few months before the the lawsuit was submitted. Cohen says he approached the attorney general and state prosecutor's office to look into the matter.

In any event, the ILA says everything was done in accordance with the law. It says that the plaintiffs are basing their claims on procedures which are in some cases no longer relevant, simply to avoid paying a large sum for building rights. "The permit fees that the plaintiffs were asked to pay by the ILA not only are firmly anchored in the law, but also no other outcome is reasonable and would merely mean getting rich illegally at the expense of the public," the state has said in response, on behalf of the ILA.

This claim infuriates the plaintiffs. Yonatan Mameluk, the son of one founder, is currently finalizing plans to tear down the old house in which his parents lived and to erect an eight-story residence instead. Mameluk's home is one of the only three remaining structures from the early years of Borochov. Another one is also about to be torn down, and a third was donated to the Givatayim municipality to serve as an artists' house.

Mameluk did not join in the lawsuit since he knew this would hold up his construction plans. However, he supports the plaintiffs. "What the ILA is saying is chutzpah of the first order," he says. "Did any of them come here in 1922 to settle? After all, my father didn't have a thing to eat. For years he would ride his donkey every day to his pharmacy in the Sharona neighborhood of Tel Aviv, and at the same time, he rented out a room in his house. Did we make a good deal? Not exactly. My father gave the JNF a gift and got nothing back. I am his heir and I have children, and I have the responsibility of taking care of them. The residents of the Borochov neighborhood won't get rich from these lands. After 'eating' from a piece of land for 85 years, you have earned your bread. Is that called getting rich?"

Many similar arguments can be found in the lawsuit, which also reflects the conceptual changes undergone by the descendants of the founders. The first few pages are full of descriptions of the pioneering efforts of the latter, but afterward the plaintiffs adapt themselves to the spirit of the times. In this way, the socialist pioneer of the 1920s turns into an enthusiastic supporter of individualism in the 21st century. "He doesn't owe a thing either to anyone else or to the authorities. He is not a righteous man, nor a pious one. He does what is required of him; he is an ordinary citizen" - thus the plaintiffs write in summary, quoting a ruling, in response to those who accuse them of growing rich at the expense of the state.

Yizhar Schneiderman, 96, is one of the only veteran residents who has a slightly different perspective. He was 10 when his father David helped spearhead the establishment of the neighborhood. He witnessed the meetings of residents where it was decided to hand over the land to the JNF. Today Schneiderman is upset about Borochov's metamorphosis into a real-estate gold mine, and has done something unusual, in contrast to others of his generation: He donated his family home to the municipality to be used as an arts center. Soon, after the other two remaining historic houses in the neighborhood are torn down, that structure will be the last relic of the early days.

"No one in the neighborhood thought it was right to do something to commemorate [my father's] name, so we decided to donate the house to the municipality. That is more important to us than what those who submitted the lawsuit want," Schneiderman says. "My father certainly did not want this neighborhood to turn into real estate. He was an idealist, but now everything is the opposite of what he wanted. If his vision were to be applied, many more homes would have been preserved for the good of the public and the Schneiderman house would not have been the only one." The younger Schneiderman eventually built a house on half of his father's plot, but received only three apartments in the deal and had to pay the monetary value of one of them to the ILA as a leasing fee. In view of this example, it is difficult to understand the claims of the plaintiffs. Even after paying the fees to the ILA, they would remain with apartments in desired neighborhoods in the center of the country, whose value the pioneers of the 1920s could not have ever imagined.