Adalah: Israeli Government’s Decision to Transfer Land Enforcement Powers to the Ministry of National Security Will Escalate Evictions and Demolitions of Palestinian Homes

On 8 August 2024, Israeli Government Decision No. 1677 came into effect, transferring the National Unit for Enforcing Planning and Construction Laws from the purview of the Ministry of Finance to the Ministry of National Security, headed by Itamar Ben-Gvir (of the Jewish Power Party). On 28 October 2024, Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel sent a letter to Israeli authorities warning that the decision would harm Palestinian citizens of Israel (PCI), and particularly Bedouins living in unrecognized villages in the Naqab, by accelerating the state’s policy of forced displacement, exacerbating the housing crisis, and perpetuating the deliberate cycle of demolitions, evictions, and dispossession.

Click here to read Adalah’s Letter [ Hebrew]

The decision, dated 7 April 2024, was confirmed by the Knesset on 24 July 2024. The National Unit, to which it pertains, was established in 2017 under the Kaminitz Law. This law grants the state expanded administrative powers to demolish homes and impose prison sentences and harsh financial penalties as punitive measures for violations of Israel’s discriminatory planning and building laws, are selectively enforced against PCI. In the letter, Adalah’s Legal Director, Attorney Dr. Suhad Bishara argued that this transfer is likely to result in a surge of demolitions, and forced evictions of Palestinian citizens.

Adalah argued that instead of addressing the root causes of unauthorized construction – namely, the acute housing crisis resulting from Israel’s deliberate and long-standing, discriminatory land and development policies implemented in Palestinian towns and villages since the establishment of the state – the Israeli government has once again chosen to criminalize Palestinian efforts to provide shelter for their families.  The decision will particularly harm Bedouins in the Naqab (Negev) in southern Israel, where the Israeli authorities refuse to recognize Bedouin villages that were established before the state’s founding or to which Bedouin citizens were relocated by the military government, and seek to forcibly displace them from their homes and land.

Adalah further argued that the decision plays a central role in intensifying state authorities' policing and control over PCI. By transferring a civil domain—planning and construction law—into the hands of a body tasked with criminal enforcement, the decision effectively criminalizes what is traditionally a regulatory and administrative issue.