Jisr al-Zarqa is the only Palestinian village in Israel that remains to this day overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. It is bordered to the south by an earthen embankment separating it from the predominantly Jewish town of Caesarea; to the north by Ma’agan Michael Kibbutz, which contains fish ponds; and to the east by Highway 2. Aerial photographs taken between 2011 and 2015. © Lushot Limited

(Jisr al-Zarqa) – Human Rights Watch said today that the policy of tightening restrictions on Palestinian communities extends beyond the West Bank and Gaza Strip to Palestinians living in Palestinian towns and villages inside Israel. This policy favors Jewish citizens over Palestinian citizens of Israel—also referred to as “Israeli Arabs,” “Palestinian citizens of Israel,” or “48 Palestinians”—and severely restricts Palestinians’ access to land for housing and natural population growth.

After decades of land confiscation and discriminatory planning policies, many Palestinian citizens now live confined to densely populated towns and villages with little room for expansion. At the same time, the Israeli government supports the growth and expansion of neighboring predominantly Jewish communities, many of which were built on the ruins of Palestinian villages destroyed in 1948. Many small Jewish communities also have “admission committees” that prevent Palestinians from living there.

Eric Goldstein, acting Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said: “Israeli policy, on both sides of the Green Line, confines Palestinians to crowded areas while allocating vast tracts of land to Jewish communities. This practice is well known in the occupied West Bank, but Israeli authorities also impose discriminatory land policies inside Israel.”

The Israeli state directly controls 93 percent of the land, including occupied East Jerusalem. The Israel Land Authority, a government institution, administers and allocates these state-controlled lands. Approximately half of its board members are affiliated with the Jewish National Fund, which is explicitly mandated to develop and lease land to Jews and not to other population groups. The fund owns approximately 13 percent of Israel’s land, which the state is authorized to use “for the purpose of Jewish settlement.”

Palestinian citizens of Israel constitute 21 percent of the country’s population. However, Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations estimated in 2017 that land administered by Palestinian municipalities accounted for less than 3 percent of Israel’s total land area. Most Palestinians in Israel live in these towns, although some live in “mixed cities” such as Haifa and Acre.

In preparation for this report, Human Rights Watch compared Palestinian towns with neighboring Jewish or predominantly Jewish towns in three of Israel’s six administrative districts. It interviewed 25 current and former municipal and local authority officials, representatives of local planning committees, residents, and planners. Human Rights Watch also visited all the locations and reviewed land records and aerial photographs. The organization received a substantive response from the Israeli Planning Administration regarding its findings.

Since 1948 and throughout the following decades, Israeli authorities confiscated hundreds of thousands of dunams of Palestinian land. The largest part was confiscated between the beginning of Israeli military rule over most Palestinian citizens in 1949 and its end in 1966. During this period, authorities confined Palestinian citizens of Israel to dozens of restricted areas and severely limited their movement. They also used numerous military and newly enacted laws to confiscate land belonging to Palestinians who had become refugees or internally displaced Palestinian citizens, by declaring the land “absentee property,” taking control of it, and subsequently declaring it state property. One historian estimates that 350 of the 370 Jewish towns and villages established by the Israeli government between 1948 and 1953 were built on land confiscated from Palestinians.

Land policy in recent years has not only failed to reverse previous confiscations, but has in many cases increased restrictions on the land available for population growth. Since 1948, the government has allowed the establishment of more than 900 “Jewish communities,” while allowing virtually no new Palestinian communities, apart from a small number of villages and small towns subject to government planning in the Negev and Galilee. This is largely part of the government’s plan to concentrate Bedouins who live in scattered communities.

Israeli authorities incorporated Palestinian towns and villages into the centralized planning system in the 1970s, but the planning processes did little to increase the land available for residential construction. Authorities classified large parts of Palestinian towns and villages for “agricultural” use or as “green areas,” prohibiting residential buildings there, while constructing roads and other infrastructure that hindered expansion. In 2003, a government-commissioned report found that “many Arab towns and villages are surrounded by land classified as security zones, Jewish regional councils, national parks and nature reserves, or highways, preventing or hindering their future expansion.”

These restrictions create population-density problems as well as a housing crisis in Palestinian towns. The Arab Center for Alternative Planning, based in Israel, estimates that between 15 and 20 percent of homes in Palestinian towns and villages are unlicensed. Some are unlicensed because their applications were rejected, while others were never submitted because their owners knew the authorities would reject them on the grounds that the buildings violated existing land-use designations. According to the center’s estimates, between 60,000 and 70,000 homes in Israel, excluding Jerusalem, face the risk of demolition. An amendment introduced in 2017 to Israel’s 1965 Planning and Building Law, known as the “Kaminitz Law,” “increases enforcement and penalties for planning and building violations.” As of July 2015, 97 percent of Israeli judicial demolition orders that had been carried out concerned structures in Palestinian towns.

By contrast, in the cases reviewed by Human Rights Watch, planning authorities allocated sufficient land and zoning permits to comparable predominantly Jewish communities to facilitate their growth.

In response to questions from Human Rights Watch, a senior official in the Israeli Planning Administration denied that Israel restricts Palestinian towns and villages. She said that the administration had approved plans and was currently preparing others for 119 of the 132 Palestinian towns in Israel. According to these plans, the authorities approved 160,000 housing units in these areas between 2012 and 2019, including 42,000 in 2019, and “legalized thousands of existing structures.”

While these efforts have resulted in some residential development in certain towns, much more remains to be done. Many projects are still awaiting approval for implementation, and to date the Planning Administration has done little to change the reality of Palestinian towns and villages subjected to restrictions.

Israeli law allows communities in the Negev and Galilee—which together account for two-thirds of Israel’s territory—with up to 400 housing units to maintain admission committees that may reject applicants on the grounds that they are “unsuitable for social life in the community” or incompatible with the “social-cultural fabric.” These authorities effectively allow Palestinians to be excluded from small Jewish communities. According to the Haifa-based Adalah legal organization, such communities accounted in 2014 for 43 percent of all Israeli communities, although Palestinians represent a smaller proportion of the state’s population. Yusuf Jabareen, an academic at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, found in a 2015 study that more than 900 small Jewish communities, including kibbutzim, across Israel could determine who was allowed to live there and had no Palestinian citizens among their residents.

In 2008, Human Rights Watch documented discriminatory Israeli policies and practices that forced tens of thousands of Palestinian Bedouins in southern Israel to live in “unrecognized” and unofficial residential communities, where they face the risk of having their homes demolished at any time. In 2010, it documented planning discrimination in a Palestinian village near Tel Aviv.

International human rights law prohibits racial and ethnic discrimination, condemns “apartheid,” and protects the right to adequate housing. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, to which Israel is a party, requires states to ensure policies and laws that progressively realize the right to adequate housing for all sectors of society. The body responsible for interpreting the covenant has stated that “the enjoyment of this right… should not be subject to any form of discrimination,” and that “increasing access to land for disadvantaged or landless sectors of society should be among the main objectives of public policy.”

To address the housing crisis among Palestinian citizens of Israel and the confiscation of land belonging to Palestinian towns and villages—which is a historical practice—Israeli authorities should prioritize the housing and expansion needs of Palestinians when allocating land uses. They should also allocate state-owned land to Palestinian communities and expand these communities, and close the legal loopholes that allow admission committees to discriminate.

Goldstein said: “Israeli land policies treat communities within its borders with a blatant lack of equality, based on whether their residents are Palestinian or Jewish. After decades of confiscating Palestinian land, Israel now confines Palestinians to overcrowded towns while promoting the prosperity of neighboring Jewish communities that exclude them.”

For the findings of the three case studies, please read below.

Planning in Israel

Israeli law places planning under the authority of the central government. Historically, this was the responsibility of the Ministry of the Interior, but a large part of it was transferred to the Ministry of Finance in 2015. The 1965 Planning and Building Law establishes a three-tier hierarchy of planning bodies responsible for developing and implementing master plans at the national, regional, and local levels. At the highest level, the Israeli National Planning and Building Council prepares national master plans reflecting the country’s vision for various matters, from land use to real estate development, and submits them for government approval. Based on these plans, district and local committees prepare their local plans.

The planning process is designed to allow participation at both the regional and local levels. In practice, however, Palestinian citizens of Israel are marginalized and are represented in government planning bodies at rates far below their proportion of the overall population, while their needs are rarely prioritized. Outside government committees, the only option available to individuals to submit their views is to file objections to specific plans.

Israeli Government Response

The Israeli Planning Administration sent a letter dated March 18 to Human Rights Watch stating that it disagreed that “Israeli policies restrict and constrain Palestinian towns and villages.” It said that it had “made a major effort to plan at all levels within planning institutions in order to strengthen and reinforce Arab communities,” creating “significant momentum in planning within these communities.”

The Planning Administration attributes planning challenges in these towns, including “many unused agricultural enclaves,” primarily to the high rate of private land ownership, estimating that 20 percent of residents own 80 percent of the land. It also points to “a shortage of land for public use,” “a high rate of unregulated construction,” “topographical challenges,” and the prevalence of large single-family homes that “prevent solutions for young couples” and lead to “multi-generational housing,” which “forces authorities to provide infrastructure across a wide area.”

The Planning Administration claims that its recent planning work addresses these challenges by “legalizing thousands of existing housing units,” allocating “some state land to enable large-scale housing construction,” and providing “the public spaces necessary for these additional housing units.” According to the Planning Administration, the result has been “master plans that include new large-scale development areas capable of accommodating a number of housing units far exceeding the programmatic and demographic needs of the population.”

In December 2015, the authorities approved a five-year “Economic Development Plan for the Arab Sector,” costing 10 billion Israeli shekels ($2.93 billion). The Israeli human rights organization Bimkom – Planners for Planning Rights noted in a 2019 progress report assessing implementation that planning in Palestinian towns had increased, including steps allowing for more housing construction, but observed that the housing crisis in Palestinian municipalities would continue unless the state allocated more land to them.

Case Studies

Jisr al-Zarqa (Haifa District)

Jisr al-Zarqa, in northwestern Israel between Netanya and Haifa, is the only Palestinian town in Israel located on the Mediterranean coast. The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics reports that it has a population of 14,700. Jisr al-Zarqa is a local council in the Haifa District with an area of approximately 1,600 dunams, and is one of Israel’s poorest communities, with 80 percent of its residents living below the poverty line.

Israeli government and British Mandate policies, a century ago, confined the residents of the town. In the early 1920s, according to the Foreign Ministry, the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association drained the marshes, which Palestinians had used to make a living by grazing buffalo and weaving reed mats, to make way for Jewish settlements. Residents said they eventually ended up with approximately the same plots of land they currently own, which are much smaller than the land on which they historically lived.

Jisr al-Zarqa did not experience the destruction and displacement that befell the neighboring towns of al-Tantura and Caesarea during the establishment of Israel in 1948. However, it was subjected to military rule, like almost all Palestinian towns and villages inside Israel, until 1966. During this period, Israeli authorities laid the foundations for restricting the town. In subsequent years, planning policies and land-use allocations further limited residents’ access to land and housing.

To the north, in August 1949, Israeli authorities granted thousands of dunams of state land to the Jewish kibbutz of Ma’agan Michael. Part of the kibbutz surrounds a cemetery that residents of Jisr al-Zarqa had used for years. In the 1970s, the kibbutz established fish ponds on its land, extending southward to the area west of the northern part of Jisr al-Zarqa. Israeli authorities established the Nahal Taninim Nature Reserve east of the fish ponds to protect the stream. The reserve covers 470 dunams and construction is prohibited there, limiting Jisr al-Zarqa’s expansion to the north. Village Council Head Murad Ammash told Human Rights Watch that 90 dunams of the reserve are privately owned by residents of Jisr al-Zarqa.

Authorities also designated part of the area for agriculture and prohibited residential construction there. Za’al Ammash, a civil servant at the village council and not related to Murad, owns land in the area classified as agricultural. He told Human Rights Watch that he sees the land “every day from my window—only one road separates my house from the land—yet I cannot move there to live.”

To the east, Highway 2 was built to connect the north and south, separating the village from agricultural land to the east that had been owned by its residents. Israeli authorities decided to build the highway in the 1960s, when residents of Jisr al-Zarqa, living under military rule, were unable to oppose its construction. Israel seized approximately 1,600 dunams east of the highway, much of it owned by Jisr al-Zarqa residents who used it for agriculture, according to the village council. Most of this land is now under the jurisdiction of the Jewish moshav of Beit Hanania.

Israel did not create any entrance or exit between the highway and Jisr al-Zarqa. The absence of highway interchanges adds 15 to 20 minutes to the time needed to travel north or south and leaves Jisr al-Zarqa with only two entrances. One is an underpass that had been used as a water channel and is only slightly wider than a car; the second is a road between the northern edge of the village and the Nahal Taninim Nature Reserve.

To the south, Israeli authorities established the town of Caesarea in 1952 on the site of the Palestinian village of Qisarya. Israeli historian Benny Morris says that the Jewish armed group Haganah expelled the residents of Caesarea in February 1948. Today, Caesarea, managed by the private Caesarea Development Corporation, is an affluent town and the birthplace of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It includes villas, a golf course, a marina, an archaeological site, and an industrial and commercial area.

For several years, many residents of Jisr al-Zarqa have worked in Caesarea, most of them in house cleaning or manual labor. However, the Caesarea Development Corporation built an earthen embankment between Caesarea and Jisr al-Zarqa measuring 1.2 kilometers in length and between nine and 12 meters in height. The embankment blocks the view of Jisr al-Zarqa from Caesarea. Ammash, the village council head, said the embankment makes it difficult for residents working in Caesarea to reach their workplaces and has “frustrated the morale and hopes” of residents. He said the embankment made them feel that Caesarea residents “do not consider us human beings” and want to “hide our existence.”

To the west lies the Mediterranean Sea. Israeli law generally prohibits construction within 100 meters of the shoreline. Authorities have established two nature reserves adjacent to the sea.

Jisr al-Zarqa faces severe overcrowding, a housing crisis, and serious economic and social challenges due to restrictions from all directions and rapid population growth. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, the population density in Jisr al-Zarqa—9,178 residents per square kilometer—is three times that of the neighboring predominantly Jewish town of Or Akiva (3,288), ten times that of Caesarea (807), and more than 30 times that of Ma’agan Michael (304). Warda Jarbaan, a 26-year-old student who lives in Jisr al-Zarqa with her family of six in a 95-square-meter house, said the town is extremely crowded: “Your neighbors can see inside your home from their windows.”

Ahmed Juha, owner of Juha Guesthouse, the only guesthouse in the town, said that when he established the guesthouse in 2014, he had to request an exemption from the law requiring a designated parking space because the nearest parking area was 500 meters away. The Israeli rights organization Bimkom estimates that in 2014 Jisr al-Zarqa needed 730 housing units to address its housing crisis at the time.

The restrictions exacerbate the economic and social challenges in Jisr al-Zarqa. The town has no industrial zone, emergency health services, post office, bank, or bank-operated ATMs, and only a few public or recreational facilities. It also lacks basic infrastructure and services. According to the Haifa-based human rights organization Mossawa, fewer than one-quarter of the town’s students complete the matriculation examination, and residents’ life expectancy is 20 years below the national average. Ammash, the village council head, said: “There is no quality of life in Jisr al-Zarqa,” and in his view, the objective of these policies is clear: “to suffocate us and displace us.”

The stark differences with neighboring communities stem directly from discriminatory Israeli policies. The state, for example, granted Ma’agan Michael Kibbutz more than 5,000 dunams of state land. Kibbutz secretary-general Nir Bracha told Human Rights Watch that the state allocated less than 10 percent of the kibbutz’s land for housing, but in several cases over time reclassified land from agricultural to residential use to meet the kibbutz’s housing needs. Bracha noted that to help the kibbutz overcome housing shortages in recent years, the government asked it to construct taller buildings as a condition for reallocating more land for housing.

The kibbutz also operates fish ponds larger in area than Jisr al-Zarqa as a whole and has an industrial zone that includes the headquarters of the prominent plastics company Plasson. Regarding Jisr al-Zarqa, Bracha acknowledged that “historical and political issues,” particularly “retaining land for Jews,” had “put pressure” on the town. However, Bracha also said that Jisr al-Zarqa had benefited from “affirmative action” in recent years, referring to measures taken by the state to address the pressure.

In 2016, Israeli authorities approved a plan to expand Highway 2, including moving the section adjacent to Jisr al-Zarqa eastward and creating entrances and exits from the highway to the town. In 2018, authorities approved a structural plan for Jisr al-Zarqa allowing the creation of “new development areas” in the space created by moving the highway eastward, according to the Planning Administration. This includes “multi-story and high-density residential buildings, as well as public spaces.” Ammash, the village council head, said the plan would provide Jisr al-Zarqa with an additional 240 dunams, although he noted that this was less than the 1,200 dunams the local council had requested in this area in 2005 based on its assessment of the town’s needs. The Planning Administration said it had proposed plans for 700 housing units in this area.

The Planning Administration also said that the structural plan permits the construction of 1,500 housing units in the residential center. It also reclassifies some “green” areas, including an area north of the village near the Nahal Taninim Nature Reserve, to allow residential construction, and permits some residential buildings near the beach. The administration said it had proposed plans for these areas that could create 930 housing units.

However, authorities have not yet authorized construction based on these plans, and many steps remain before they can be completed. In January 2019, the Ministry of Transport said it lacked 600 million shekels ($174 million) to reroute Highway 2, according to minutes of a government meeting with residents of Jisr al-Zarqa reviewed by Human Rights Watch. Ammash said Jisr al-Zarqa proposed in May 2019 to develop this land even if Highway 2 remained in its current location, but authorities rejected the request, arguing that it would affect the town’s geographic continuity, according to Ammash. The Israeli Planning Administration said in an email to Human Rights Watch that it expected the government, once formed following the March 2 elections, to discuss rerouting the highway.

Qalansuwa (Central District)

The Palestinian city of Qalansuwa, home to 22,800 people, is located in central Israel in a densely populated Palestinian area known as the Triangle. Although Qalansuwa has approximately 8,400 dunams within its municipal boundaries, Israeli land and planning policies have confined the residential area to the city center, which is highly developed and accounts for roughly half its area, creating severe density and housing shortages.

Qalansuwa lost more than half of its land as a result of events surrounding the establishment of Israel in 1948 and during the following two decades. A land survey cited in a 2017 letter from the Qalansuwa municipality to the Ministry of the Interior and reviewed by Human Rights Watch showed a land area of 17,249 dunams, while a municipal official told Human Rights Watch that the city’s actual boundaries before 1948 were closer to 30,000 dunams. Israeli authorities seized a large portion of the land west of Qalansuwa in the 1950s and 1960s, as documented in a 1976 study by lawyer and researcher Sabri Jiryis, a Palestinian citizen of Israel. Among the tools that enabled authorities to take control of the land were laws classifying land as “absentee property.”

During the same period, Israel also began building infrastructure projects on Qalansuwa’s land, further limiting the land available for expansion. The first project was a water pipeline built in the 1960s, cutting across the city in a strip approximately 2.5 kilometers long and 50 meters wide, according to Nadi Tayah, the municipality’s planning engineer. In practice, the pipeline, along the western edge of the residential area, marks the boundary of the city’s residential center.

Israeli authorities established an electricity line across the city’s land in the 1990s. The Popular Committee for the Defense of Land and Housing in Qalansuwa, a grassroots movement working on land-related issues, told Human Rights Watch that Israeli law prohibits construction within 150 meters of the line, which extends for 3.5 kilometers and removes 500 dunams from the land available for construction. The committee said authorities had issued demolition orders for 25 homes and 20 commercial buildings allegedly constructed within the 150-meter zone. Tayah, the municipal official, believes the lines reduce land values in the area by 60 to 70 percent and raise safety and health concerns among residents.

Israeli authorities also prohibit construction near Wadi Iskander, which flows through the city, including through the center of the residential area. The Popular Committee estimates that the restriction, covering 75 meters on both banks in agricultural areas and 35 meters in residential areas, reduces the land available for construction by an additional 500 dunams.

The Popular Committee said Israeli authorities began formal planning in Qalansuwa only in the 1970s, and by 2017 had still not approved a comprehensive municipal plan. Planning decisions significantly restricted the land available for residential use. Most importantly, Israeli authorities designated virtually all areas north of Qalansuwa and large parts of the east and west—approximately 4,200 dunams, or half the city’s area—for agricultural use and prohibited residential units there.

A 31-year-old Qalansuwa resident said her family owns a 400-square-meter property in an area designated exclusively for agricultural use, only a few meters from the residential zone. She hoped to build her family home there, but despite years of efforts through the municipality and directly with planning authorities, they were unable to change the land classification and instead moved to a nearby Palestinian village.

Muhammad Odeh, 52, a father of three, said he decided in 2015 to build a house on his property in an agricultural area without a permit in order to move from the place where he was living, which he described as a “storage room” where water leaked in and insects were everywhere. He received a demolition order within months of starting construction in 2016. He filed a legal appeal, organized demonstrations, and even recorded a widely circulated video saying that he might commit suicide if the demolition was carried out. He lives in his unfinished home under the looming threat of demolition.

Tayah, the municipal engineer, said between 600 and 700 structures, including some homes, in the agricultural area face demolition orders because they were built without permits. Some residents in the city’s residential center also did not apply for building permits because their homes did not comply with Israeli regulations, in most cases because they had expanded beyond the limits of the plan. The Popular Committee estimates that approximately 7,500 Qalansuwa residents, or 30 percent of the population, do not own land in the city and barely make a living, while another 35 percent own land but need additional space to meet their families’ needs.

During the process leading to the approval of Qalansuwa’s first structural plan in 2017, residents, activists, and municipal officials say they submitted more than 4,000 objections to the plan. These included requests to reclassify a large portion of agricultural land, allocate 1,200 dunams of state land near Qalansuwa to the city, relocate the electricity line outside the city, and block plans to construct two roads across Qalansuwa’s land.

In response, the authorities amended the Israeli national plan in 2016 to approve, in principle, the reclassification of 2,800 dunams in the agricultural area for residential use. The Popular Committee said this amendment was not reflected in Qalansuwa’s structural plan, meaning that it could take a decade or more before any residential building could begin, given all the required approvals. It also noted that under the master plan, the authorities allocated no state-owned land to Qalansuwa and did not relocate government infrastructure projects.

The Israeli Planning Administration says it approved 2,400 housing units in Qalansuwa over the previous five years and that the authorities are preparing a “new policy document” that could facilitate increased growth.

Although Israeli authorities have demolished only a small number of homes in Qalansuwa—25 according to the Popular Committee, including homeowners who demolished their own buildings to avoid paying fees—the threat of demolition imposes a heavy cost. Tayah links some of the city’s social problems, including drugs and crime, to young people’s feeling that “there is no hope of building a home, a family, and a future in the city.”

Abu Ameed Makhlouf, 60, a father of nine, said authorities demolished two homes he had built for his sons in 2017 on the grounds that he lacked a permit. Another son pays 2,000 shekels ($583) in monthly fines and must obtain a permit within two years to avoid the same outcome. He said he built without permits because “I had no alternative,” and that the family lives “under constant pressure and fear,” adding that the demolitions “destroyed our lives.”

Sha’ar Efraim, an entirely Jewish agricultural village (moshav) built in the 1950s, borders Qalansuwa to the east. The village has an admission committee and faces few of the challenges confronting its neighbor. Iris Engel, director of the Planning and Building Committee in the Lev HaSharon Regional Council, which includes Sha’ar Efraim but not Qalansuwa, said national infrastructure projects had not limited Sha’ar Efraim’s expansion. In fact, Sha’ar Efraim built gates at its entrances and sometimes prevents non-residents from using the road passing through it. No homes there face demolition orders, and previous plans allowed construction on agricultural land, Engel said.

Ein Mahil (Northern District)

The town of Ein Mahil, home to approximately 13,000 Palestinians, covers about 5,200 dunams near Nazareth in northern Israel and is surrounded on all sides by the predominantly Jewish city of Nof HaGalil, which until 2019 was known as Nazareth Illit. Nof HaGalil has approximately 41,200 residents and covers about 33,000 dunams, many of whose residents immigrated from Eastern Europe in the 1980s and 1990s.

Nof HaGalil is officially a “mixed city.” Palestinians currently make up 26 percent of its population. However, Israeli authorities viewed Nazareth Illit from the outset as “a Jewish town that would reinforce the Jewish presence in the region,” as Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, wrote in 1957. Israeli military planning director Yuval Ne’eman also said that the city would “strengthen and preserve the Jewish character of the Galilee as a whole.” Nazareth Illit was a major component of the government’s strategy to “Judaize the Galilee.” The military governor of the north at the time, Colonel Michael Michael, wrote that Nazareth Illit would “swallow” Nazareth, a Palestinian city, resulting in “the transfer of the center of gravity of life from Nazareth to the Jewish neighborhood.”

Nof HaGalil, adjacent to Nazareth, completely surrounds Ein Mahil and extends between five other Palestinian towns and villages, hindering the creation of a large, contiguous Palestinian municipal area.

During the period of military rule imposed on most Palestinian citizens, including the residents of Ein Mahil, Israeli authorities established part of Nazareth Illit in 1957 on land confiscated from Ein Mahil through procedures that included laws governing “absentee property,” as documented in a book by Hussein Abu Hussein, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, and British human rights lawyer Fiona McKay. Confiscation continued after the end of military rule, including the confiscation of more than 1,000 additional dunams in the mid-1970s. According to the local council, Ein Mahil’s area today is approximately one-third of its original size.

Planning policies require residents to build within the village’s approximately 2,000-dunam residential center. Ein Mahil’s first plan, in 1982, and its second, in 1996, designated most of the town’s land for agricultural use. Said Abu Lail, a retired teacher, said that residents living in the residential center face a housing crisis like his own, with many young people reluctantly moving outside the village, including to Nof HaGalil/Nazareth Illit.

Abu Lail said the plans provided some additional space for residential construction, but much of the land designated for this purpose was privately owned. He estimates that reclassifying private land would not necessarily provide housing for people who do not own land and cannot afford to buy it—who, according to Abu Lail’s estimate, represent 20 to 30 percent of Ein Mahil’s population. State land may be needed to achieve this goal.

Dentist Marwan Habiballah, 53, said Israeli authorities confiscated approximately 11 dunams of his land in 1976 as part of a broader government confiscation of approximately 20,000 dunams that sparked protests commemorated by activists every year on March 30 as Land Day. He said he filed a lawsuit that resulted in an offer of financial compensation, which he rejected. His family owns nine to ten dunams of land in the agricultural area near the built-up area, but he cannot build on it. He says he has no choice but to remain in his grandfather’s inherited home in the residential center, which he says is too small for his family of six. He considered moving to Nof HaGalil but said he could not afford the rent there.

Saher Abu Lail, 40, is a physical therapist with a graduate degree from Tel Aviv University and the father of five children. He left Ein Mahil, where he grew up, for Nazareth Illit in 2010 because of the housing crisis. He said he would not have moved if he had been able to build a home on a plot of approximately four dunams owned by his family in southeastern Ein Mahil, but the authorities designated the area for agricultural use. He sought to buy a home in Ein Mahil in 2015, but said the bank denied him a loan, claiming that the property would not generate sufficient returns if he defaulted.

Israeli authorities restricted Ein Mahil while allowing Nof HaGalil to grow rapidly. Building on state land and designating it as a priority development area, Israeli authorities invested heavily in Nof HaGalil, including establishing the Tziporit Industrial Zone, which contains factories and a high-tech complex and is planned to cover 3,560 dunams. Nof HaGalil, which is also home to the headquarters of the Strauss Elite chocolate factory, receives all local tax revenues from these industries; none of these taxes go to the surrounding town of Ein Mahil.

Authorities also did not allocate any part of the city’s land for agriculture, according to municipal director-general Hava Bachar. By contrast, Ein Mahil has no industrial zones and few areas designated for public spaces. As Said Abu Lail put it, Ein Mahil is “a place to reside, but not to live.”

Thousands of Palestinian citizens have moved to Nof HaGalil in recent years, purchasing properties largely from Israeli Jews who were relocated there as immigrants and later earned enough “to move toward a better life in central Israel,” according to Nazareth-based journalist Jonathan Cook. Bachar attributes the arrival of Palestinians in Nof HaGalil to the fact that “neighboring towns have no room to grow.” She noted that Nof HaGalil had provided a piece of land for a cemetery for residents of Ein Mahil, but did not want to “give up the land,” given “our ambition to reach 100,000 residents.” Instead, she suggested that Israel build “a new city for Arab citizens.”

Bachar said the city “brings Jewish families to settle” in order to “ensure that it remains Jewish.” Nof HaGalil has no public school for approximately 3,000 Palestinian school-age children, forcing most of them to commute to Nazareth, where Palestinian and Israeli Jewish students attend separate schools. The mayor at the time told The Washington Post in 2013: “I would rather cut off my right arm than build an Arab school.”

The Planning Administration says it is in the process of approving a comprehensive plan for Ein Mahil. An official in Ein Mahil said the village had requested that the plan reclassify agricultural land to permit residential construction and reallocate state-owned land. The draft plan states that, if approved, agricultural land—including some areas outside the town’s boundaries—would be reclassified as a residential area containing 12,000 housing units, compared with the 3,000 housing units currently existing in the village.