Land Expropriation in Israel: Law, Culture, and Society.

• Author: Wolff, D.J.
• Position: Book review

Land Expropriation in Israel: Law, Culture, and Society. By Yifat Holzman-Gazit, Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2007, Pp. 204, $99.95 (hardcover).

In her book, Land Expropriation in Israel, Yifat Holzman-Gazit undertakes a historical analysis of the Israeli Supreme Court's deferential attitude towards governmental expropriation of private property. While Israel has no written constitution, its Supreme Court has proactively developed a "judicial bill of rights" (p. 33), judicially ensuring the protection of basic civil liberties such as free speech, movement, and religion. Yet the Court has failed to develop similar limitations on the government's

broad power of expropriation. Holzman-Gazit's book endeavors to analyze why.

The author is a self-identified scholar of the intersection between law and society and therefore looks to the "social, cultural, and political underpinnings of Israel's land expropriation law" (p. 1) to explain the Supreme Court's uniquely deferential attitude. As such, she undertakes an intimidating task, analyzing the intersection of two frequently inscrutable subjects: comparative property law and Israel's sociopolitical history. That Land Expropriation in Israel is simultaneously detailed enough to explore the underlying issues yet concise enough to be accessible to the lay reader is a testament both to Holzman-Gazit's demonstrably thorough knowledge of the fields as well as her literary skill.

The first part of the book introduces the basic legislative and judicial framework of Israel's expropriation regime, starting with a discussion of the Israeli tenure system of land ownership. While most Western democracies have some provisions for public land ownership, Israel stands out in that "approximately 93 percent of Israel's total land area of 21.7 million dunams (1) is owned by the state and by public bodies, and by law cannot be sold to individuals" (p. 24). Instead, the Israeli government leases this land to individuals for 99-year periods. While the restrictions on this land have been relaxed enough in recent years that most Israelis consider themselves to be landowners, they are still not allowed to alienate their leasehold to a non-Israeli without the approval of the Israeli Lands Administration (ILA).

With only seven percent of the country's land in private ownership, why does the Israeli government need a power of expropriation at all? According to Holzman-Gazit, the seemingly small percentage of privately owned land obscures its strategic importance. Most of the public land is concentrated "in rural areas, the Negev desert and other peripheral...