Human Rights organizations call on immediate suspension of bill that expands the use of administrative demolition orders and other punitive measures on construction offenses
On 8 June 2023, Adalah, Sikkuy-Aufoq, the Arab Center for Alternative Planning, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, and the Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages in the Negev, sent a letter to the chairman of the Internal affairs and Environment Committee and the deputy legal adviser of the Ministry of Justice, calling for the immediate suspension of a bill that amend the Planning and Building Law.
The proposed amendments would expand the enforcement and penalties for building offenses, including by granting authority to the National Unit for Enforcing Planning and Construction Laws (hereinafter: the National Unit) to disconnect electricity or water supply from a structure that did not obtain all required building permits; extending the period of occupancy that allows the authority to carry out an administrative demolition of a building without a permit, and extending the period for executing administrative demolition orders; and applying an administrative procedure for the collection of the costs for carrying out demolition orders.
The amendments are a direct continuation of the policy enforcing punitive measures on construction offenses that was expanded in Amendment 116 to the Planning and Building Law (Hereinafter: The Kaminitz Law), and which severely harmed the basic rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel (PCI) of Israel to property, housing and dignity.
The proposed law seeks to extend the period of occupancy during which authorities can issue a demolition order for a residence built without a permit for a period of 45 days (instead of 30 days today), as well as to extend the validity of the demolition orders for a period of 90 days (instead of 60). These provisions will aggravate rights’ violations, even more so in light of the nature of this administrative procedure as the occupants lack real ability to defend themselves and maintain their rights. In the letter, the organizations argued that that Residential structures provide roof to people, and so special care must be taken to minimize the harm and to guarantee the residents’ constitutional right to adequate housing and a source of livelihood.
Currently, the authority to disconnect buildings from the electricity, water or phone services is exclusively within the discretion of the local planning committees, which are familiar with the local needs and planning priorities in each area, and the individual circumstances of each case, allowing them to take into account relevant considerations before taking drastic measures such as cutting off life-saving services. Granting sweeping powers to the National Unit without distinguishing between different types of construction, will result in the disconnection of houses from electricity and water without considering the personal or humanitarian circumstances of the families, or general planning circumstances.
The use of administrative procedures to collect fees for house demolitions will grant authorities far-reaching powers that would cause fundamental harm to individual rights, as it establishes draconian arrangements for the collection of debts without judicial procedure, a mechanism for appeal or effective supervision. It will no longer be possible to dispute the very nature of the fees or to monitor the discretion of the authorities or to challenge it.
The bill will have far-reaching consequences for PCI, who have been suffering from an acute housing crisis, of which construction without a permit is but one symptom. The severe planning predicament in Arab towns is a direct result of long-standing institutional neglect and discrimination, which systematically ignored the needs of the Arab population in the field of housing and development, and the proposed amendments will only add to the violation of rights and suffering of PCI.
The bill does not address the source of the problem - the state's discrimination in planning policies towards the Palestinian community, and must be rejected. The advancement of this bill will deepen the already existing separate and almost exclusive "enforcement" system for the Palestinian population. Since the Kaminitz Law came into effect, the enforcement and punishment for building without a permit has massively expanded, imposing huge fines on PCI and led to the demolition of thousands of buildings.
The existing legislation is sometimes used by the National Unit to promote a punitive political agenda and for extraneous and non-planning considerations. A clear example was when the National Unit chose to enforce the law in the city of Lod against the backdrop of the violent events of May 2021, in a manner aimed at collectively punishing its Arab residents. This comes at a time of intense racist legislation and policies by the far-right government, including in land planning.
The housing reality in the Bedouin communities Naqab is even harsher than that of other Arab towns. Although over 100,000 housing units in the Naqab have been approved in recent years, the number of permits issued in the Naqab stands only at a few hundred per year. The planning process takes many years, and the permits are not granted to residents due to the lack of essential infrastructure and the authorities' failure to recognize the Bedouin ownership of the lands in these villages.
In addition, there is also the long-standing matter of the state’s refusal to recognize 37 villages, home to around 80,000 Bedouin citizens. This extremely vulnerable group has faced an unprecedented number of demolitions of structures, and demolition orders have become another draconian tool to exert pressure on the local community in order to forcefully evict the residents.
Read about the Kaminitz law: Knesset 'adding insult to injury' with approval of Kaminitz Law
