Cabinet Expected to Adopt Compromise on Land Purchases in Administered Territories

A compromise suggestion by Justice Minister Yaacov Shimshon Shapiro on the issue of Jewish land purchases in the administered Arab territories is expected to be approved by the Cabinet, ending a burgeoning dispute between ministers on the question. The proposal calls for a government authority–probably the Israel Lands Authority–to be empowered to approve or veto all land purchases by Jews in the territories under criteria to be established by the Cabinet.

Shapiro’s suggestion is midway between Defense Minister Moshe Dayan’s call for unrestricted Jewish land purchases throughout the territories and the position of most other ministers who believe the government must control buying for political and military reasons. Reports have surfaced in recent days of large scale land purchases on the West Bank by Jews which were not legal transactions. The government has not allowed the transactions to be recorded in the land registries of the West Bank. As a result, the parties have been resorting to an irrevocable power of attorney, whereby the vendor assigns to the purchaser the irrevocable right to do as he pleases with the piece of land.

Under Shapiro’s proposal, land transfers approved by the government authority probably would be registered in the land registries and would have full legal effect. Thus the proposal would seem to satisfy Dayan on the one hand who has complained that the government was barring Jews from owning land in the “homeland,” and at the same time would placate others, notably Foreign Minister Abba Eban, who are concerned that individual enterprise might drag the government and the Army into political and military responsibilities which it does not want.