The absence of either collective or private real-property rights holds for all the kibbutzim across Israel – some of them with seven and eight generations of history since the founding members. Each and every kibbutz has periodically faced security threats during pre-state and state years. After the establishment of the state, some kibbutzim volunteered to set up in the most difficult climatic areas in the southern desert and along the Jordan Valley. Despite the physical hardships, the kibbutzim have been conducting globally exemplary farming productivity, creating innovative industries, services and technologies, and contributing to regional and national public good well beyond their 2% representation in the population.
There is also an ugly side to the perseverance of the state land-ownership anomaly. Given the above facts, it’s hard to believe that kibbutzim and their members, everywhere in the country, have in recent decades become targets for political incitement under the myth that they are a “privileged rich elite” class.
With no real estate assets, the facts are, of course, the opposite. Apparently, it is easy to generate jealousy-driven disinformation against a minority. What the rest of the population see is the well-managed green villages with excellent self-supplied education and cultural services. Community cohesion has also succeeded over decades in producing housing that is modest but egalitarian.
No researchers before us have ever addressed the land policy imposed on the kibbutzim. Our socio-legal-empirical research seeks to lift the veil from the archaic and unjust state land policy which has become entrenched and blind to the outside world. With the use of a variety of theories and methods drawn from law, economics, sociology, and public policy, the Neaman Institute of National Policy Research at the Technion has launched groundbreaking research to reassess the axiom that the state should continue to own the land where the kibbutz members reside and work.■
