Seeds of dissent
Arye Dayan
Veteran kibbutz members aren't in a
compromising mood: History and the law entitle them to do what they want with
their land, they insist. But it's our land, too, claims the Hakeshet
Hamizrahit social justice movement. Meanwhile, High
Court hearings on the issue have been postponed - yet again.
A few months ago, Kibbutz Ga'ash members and guests gathered on one of the lawns to
watch the traditional Shavuot holiday ceremony - one of the highlights on the
annual calendar there, as at most kibbutzim around the country. As is
customary, the ceremony began with greetings by the kibbutz manager, who opened
his remarks with well-worn, stock phrases: "On this, well-rooted
agricultural holiday, the people of Israel expresses its link with the
landscape, and with the fruit, of its country ..."
Then, after this standard opening, the speaker broke with custom, turning his
address into a polemic whose strident tone jarred many of the listeners. The
brunt of his remarks was directed at a topic that has dominated the agenda of
many kibbutz discussions in recent months: future ownership of kibbutz lands.
Controversy over this issue, which has been debated for years, has heated up in
past months.
The impetus for the renewed debate is a High Court petition submitted 18 months
ago by the Hakeshet Hamizrahit
[Sephardi Democratic Rainbow] social action movement
(which was established to promote the needs and concerns of Israeli Jews of
Middle Eastern origin). Hakeshet demands that the
court repeal a government decision which recognizes kibbutz ownership of the
lands; should the decision go into effect, members of kibbutzim around the
country will be able to make a fortune by redesignating
lands that are used - or are slated - for agriculture as property which can be
sold for commercial development or residential construction.
The ideological-political gulf which yawns between kibbutz members and Hakeshet is so vast that the two sides are unable to agree
upon a characterization of the issue at hand. While kibbutz leaders talk about
"the struggle to solidify our rights to our land," Hakeshet members refer to "a struggle opposing kibbutz
efforts to wrest control of state-owned lands."
Private collective deals
"We are celebrating the Shavuot holiday," Ga'ash
manager Yoav Drori
declared, launching into the political part of his speech, "at a time when
a bitter fight is being waged with our neighbors, the Palestinians, about
rights to the lands of
Immediately after this reference, Drori argued that
not only Palestinians are trying to appropriate lands from the kibbutzim.
"Simultaneously," he said, "an incitement campaign is being
waged against members of the pioneering kibbutz movement; this campaign seeks
to negate our right, as individuals and as a community, to the land upon which
we've established our communities and built our homes ...
"Government officials and banks, politicians and journalists greedily fix
their eyes and reach with their hands, aiming to expropriate our property, the
lands of our fathers. Agriculture and working the land has become a black sheep
- and a punching bag - in the eyes of some members of
This week, Ma'ariv reported that Kibbutz Ga'ash signed a deal with a private company, selling 500 dunams [125 acres] of its land for $28 million. All revenue
from the sale, the report claimed, is to be used to cover debts owed by Ga'ash.
Drori's speech at Ga'ash -
a kibbutz located north of Herzliya, which sprawls
over some of the most expensive real estate in the country - reflects the
assertive, uncompromising mood which currently grips the kibbutz movement as a
whole. The kibbutzim have taken the offensive, aggressively arguing that the
land is theirs to do with as they please. Meanwhile, a noticeable gap between
real estate money-making, and pioneering-agricultural rhetoric, has started to
divide the deeds and words of kibbutz leaders.
In past years, kibbutz spokesmen struck an apologetic chord whenever they spoke
about the planned disposition of their lands. Now, feeling mistreated and
emboldened, leaders claim that their communities are besieged by an all-out
attack, whose purpose is to undermine the right to land which their members
rightfully earned by the sweat of their brows, after working it for dozens of
years.
The Hakeshet Hamizrahit
High Court petition, the kibbutz spokesmen suggest, is merely the tip of the
iceberg. The media, which has traditionally been hostile to kibbutz movements,
is not the only Hakeshet ally in this crusade. High-ranking
public officials, the kibbutz spokesmen contend, have also joined the assault
against kibbutz lands: There is, they claim, an alliance between public
servants such as the heads of the Israel Lands Administration (ILA), and top
officials at the Finance Ministry, who are usually not thought of as
ideological or political cohorts of radical-left organizations such as Hakeshet Hamizrahit.
Though a strong agricultural lobby operates in the Knesset, kibbutzim leaders
feel that they are under-represented in
Conflict of interest?
In view of these perceptions and suspicions, it is small wonder that Drori's outspoken polemic about government officials,
politicians and journalists conspiring to appropriate property rightfully owned
by the agricultural communities themselves was welcomed on many kibbutzim. His
speech was circulated widely in various kibbutz publications, and was
disseminated via e-mail and in the section of the kibbutz movement's Internet
site devoted to the land rights controversy.
Drori's defiant remarks were just one expression of
the sense of discrimination and persecution that hounds kibbutz members today.
Another example: A kibbutz movement legal counsel, Attorney Victor Hertzberg,
published a lengthy, harsh attack against Attorney General Elyakim
Rubinstein in a recent edition of Hadaf Hayarok, the kibbutz movement's weekly journal.
In a recent speech, Rubinstein gave a nod to Hakeshet
Hamizrahit's position, saying that agricultural lands
were given to kibbutz settlements as a "deposit," for farming use
only. "What bothers me about this," Hertzberg wrote in response,
"is not the claim raised by the Hakeshet Hamizrahit members, who are ostensibly concerned about `Mizrahi' Jews, while actually playing into the hands of
those who greedily paw lands held by members of the Labor Zionist movement.
What troubles me is that the much-respected attorney general blindly adopted
this unfounded claim."
In his article, Hertzberg didn't furnish an explanation as to why Rubinstein
was, in his view, duped by Hakeshet's
"unfounded" contention. But the kibbutz movement counsel insists that
by embracing Hakeshet's argument, the attorney
general has abandoned the "Zionist ethos."
Attorney Mika Drori, formerly legal adviser to the Hakibbutz Ha'artzi movement, and
today the director of the newly amalgamated kibbutz movement legal department,
directs his barbs at an even more august legal target: Supreme Court President Aharon Barak.
In an article written in response to Justice Barak's
ruling - that a conflict of interest arises when a kibbutz movement member
serves on ILA committees which deal with problems involving kibbutz land - Drori concluded: "This court verdict, and similar
rulings which preceded it, result from a decade of fallacious incitement and
defamation against the kibbutz movement on the land issue."
He added: "High Court justices rely on documents written by the State
Prosecutor's office; and the State Prosecutor submits facts that are, in the best
case, not corroborated or which, in the worst case, are influenced by
deliberate distortions."
"We, members of the kibbutzim, are today the worst victims of
discrimination in the state, next to the Arab sector," Shaul
Slomnitzki declared this week, speaking in a
self-assured tone, without a trace of cynicism. Slomnitzki
belongs to Kibbutz Beit Alfa, an
Hashomer Hatzair-affiliated
kibbutz located on the eastern ridge of the
In the small print
Beit Alfa's built-up areas stretch over one-tenth of
its land. In addition to residential structures, this property includes the
premises of the kibbutz's furniture factory (which mainly manufactures kitchens
and hotel furnishings); a factory specializing in producing special protective
equipment for automobiles (whose business with settlements in the territories
has flourished of late); a factory which makes crowd-dispersal equipment (whose
products were, in the past, sold to oppressive regimes, such as Pinochet's government in Chile); an older factory which
produces thermostats; a gas station and some stores; and a few
bed-and-breakfast facilities.
The remaining 9,000 dunams around Beit
Alfa are used for agriculture. Some two-thirds of this land was purchased by
the Jewish National Fund in the 1920s and 1930s, and leased to the kibbutz for
agricultural work. Before 1948, the remaining one-third belonged mostly to
Palestinian villages. After the 1948 War of Independence, this land was seized
by the state and also leased to Beit Alfa. Revenue
accrued by agricultural work on this huge expanse of land amounts to no more
than 10 percent of the total revenue earned by Kibbutz Beit
Alfa.
Slomnitzki says that he simply can't fathom the moral
and legal basis of the demand that he and his fellow kibbutz members should
agree to return this land, or at least its uncultivated portions, to the state.
"The claim that we received the lands as a deposit is a fabrication concocted
by the attorney general," the Beit Alfa member
claims. "It is a fabrication invented by someone who really wants to turn
the lands into a `deposit.' The land was given to us in perpetuity, even though
formally it wasn't transferred in perpetuity since the Jewish National Fund's
regulations ban permanent transfers."
Slomnitzki denies that the state furnished the lands
to the kibbutzim exclusively for agricultural purposes. Nobody is better versed
with the small print in deeds and agreements which his kibbutz signed with the
JNF in 1942, and with the ILA some 30 years later. Slomnitzki
insists that the small print substantiates his kibbutz's claims. Yet instead of
formal allusion to such legal documents, the Beit
Alfa member relies on Zionist ideology and rhetoric to support his arguments -
no matter that detractors might object that such rhetoric has gone stale.
"The people of
Slomnitzki was born on Beit
Alfa 70 years ago, the son of pioneering immigrants from
Throughout the past decade, Slomnitzki has been a
member of the Gilboa regional council plenum, which
is comprised of delegates from kibbutzim, moshavim
and Arab villages east of Afula. Some 40 percent of
the residents under the council's jurisdiction live in Arab villages; yet
almost all of the land, no less than 90 percent, belongs
to the kibbutz and moshav communities.
Slomnitzki doesn't believe that land distribution
ratios in the Gilboa region are unjust or flawed; in
fact, he believes that some portion of the council's lands should be slated for
new construction projects that would be affiliated with the kibbutzim, and
which would "preserve a Jewish majority in the region." (Beit Alfa has some 400 members today,
about half the number it had 20 years ago.)
He speaks with audible resentment about Hakeshet Hamizrahit, declaring that "while they have a few
professors, this is, all told, an ethnic organization which loathes
kibbutzim." Nonetheless, Slomnitzki admits that
some of Hakeshet's claims have "some
logic."
He explains: "Attacks against us started when a few dozen moshavim in the center of the country began building on
every hilltop, without obstruction, without any input from the authorities.
Then the moshav members made real-estate deals with
entrepreneurs, and raked in huge amounts of money. Later, when some kibbutzim
in the center of the country tried to climb aboard this gravy train, the
attempt provoked an uproar.
"I can understand claims made by Hakeshet Hamizrahit against ILA policy which condoned [real-estate
moves made by the moshavim and kibbutzim in the center
of the country]; but, as kibbutzim on the periphery, we don't have any part of
this business."
As Slomnitzki sees it, Hakeshet
allegations about kibbutz land profiteering "reek with the same bad
odor" which wafted in vituperative accusations some 20 years ago about
kibbutz "free-loaders" lounging around their swimming pools. And Slomnitzki rejects Hakeshet's
claim that kibbutz-controlled land chokes nearby low-income "development
towns," preventing them from growing.
"If Beit Alfa didn't exist," he concludes,
"this land wouldn't be worth a nickel today, just as in the day when the
JNF purchased it. Nor would Afula nor Beit She'an
be worth anything, were it not for Beit Alfa. Had the
kibbutzim not been here during the Independence War, I'm not sure whether Beit She'an would have been
conquered [by Jewish troops]. Beit She'an was an Arab town which was conquered only because
kibbutz settlements were around it."
Back in
The High Court was scheduled to begin discussion of the Hakeshet
Hamizrahit petition last Sunday. The hearing on the
18-month-old petition, however, was deferred because the State Prosecutor's
office asked for two months to finalize its position. This was the fifth time
the court delayed taking action on the petition.
The questions to be debated by the court are deceptively clear-cut: Do lands
which the state, and previously the JNF, leased to the kibbutzim for
agricultural cultivation belong to the kibbutz settlements, or to the state?
Are the kibbutzim entitled to alter their agricultural designation, and use the
land for construction and tourist projects likely to add millions of dollars to
their coffers; or, alternatively, does the reclassification of the lands
require that they be returned to the state, so that they can be redistributed
between kibbutzim, moshavim and low-income towns? If
the lands are to be returned to the state once they are redesignated,
should the kibbutzim be compensated? If so, how much state money should the
kibbutzim receive in compensations?
However clearly defined, resolving these questions is proving to be no easy
feat. In fact, they are among the most vexing, complicated issues to wend their
way to the High Court in recent years, primarily because any solutions which
are reached will have tremendous impact upon
The Hakeshet petition raises one cardinal question:
Should the vast wealth inherent in the tens of thousands of dunams
of land that are, for historical reasons, controlled by the kibbutzim, be used to enrich only kibbutz members; or, should the
wealth be distributed in the future on a revised, more egalitarian and shared
basis?
Hakeshet Hamizrahit's
position paper on the land issue divides Jewish communities in the country
along ethnic, Ashkenazi (mainly kibbutzim and enclaves defined as
"community settlements"), and Mizrahi
(development towns) lines. The paper declares that "in the
Lands under the jurisdiction of Arab regional councils encompass just 16.1
percent of the total area, whereas Arab residents constitute 72 percent of the
total population of the
Hakeshet's High Court petition seeks to transform
current patterns of land distribution.
The kibbutz land issue was first debated in the early 1990s. The mass
immigration from the former
The decision stirred public protest. Before it spawned a significant number of
real-estate deals, it was replaced by a different government resolution (No.
727), which lowered the compensation level to 27 percent.
In response to Hakeshet Hamizrahit's
High Court petition protesting the implementation of government decision No.
727, an inter-ministerial committee was established to review the kibbutz lands
dispute. In November 2000, the committee submitted its recommendations, calling
for the compensation figure to be reduced to just 10 percent. Hakeshet, which by the end of 2000 was entangled in a
number of internal ideological controversies, seemed willing to accept the
inter-ministerial committee's recommendations. But kibbutz leaders vehemently
rejected them.
The agricultural lobby fought for the kibbutz leaders' position in the Knesset,
and managed to persuade some MKs to sponsor a bill
which would basically provide the kibbutzim with 100 percent ownership of their
lands. This proposed bill, whose main backer is today's Agriculture Minister
Shalom Simhon, has passed preliminary and first
readings in the Knesset, and is currently being reviewed by the Knesset Finance
Committee.
High Court judges seem to be dragging their feet on the Hakeshet
petition due to a hope that the Knesset will resolve the issue. Abiding by a
new judicial philosophy of dodging highly contentious, political controversies,
the judges seem to prefer to leave the ball in the politicians' court on the
thorny kibbutz land issue.
But the politicians can't make up their minds about the kibbutz turf war. On
one side of the battle, Agriculture Minister Simhon
is joined by a bipartisan group of Knesset allies, MK Avshalom
Vilan (Meretz), Yisrael Katz (Likud), and Zvi Hendel (National Union-Yisrael Beiteinu); opposing this
alliance are Labor ministers, who want to avoid injuring the JNF's status, and also Justice Minister Meir
Sheetrit, who seems favorably disposed to Hakeshet Hamizrahit's position.
In the end, the issue is likely to be decided by the same politician who
formulated the ILA's original position on the kibbutz
land issue: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Shaul Slomnitzki, the Beit Alfa member
and left-wing Hashomer Hatzair
movement veteran, is hardly frightened by such a scenario.
"There's no minister in this government who did more on behalf of the
kibbutz settlement movement than Arik Sharon," Slomnitzki opines. "In his various government posts,
from the agriculture portfolio, to the industry and trade post, and as national
infrastructure minister, he consistently upheld kibbutz community interests. I
have my disagreements with him about peace process issues - but on this land
topic,