Compensation for Jews Who
Lost Homes in Disengagement
(Updated July 2011)
Overview of the Disengagement Plan
Under the disengagement
plan, 21 Gaza settlements and four in the northern West
Bank were evacuated in the summer of 2005. Under legislation passed by the Knesset, settlers
are to be compensated for the loss of their homes, land and businesses.
The
settlements were divided into four groups — three
in the Gaza
Strip and the fourth
comprising settlements in the West
Bank. On June 9, 2005, Israel’s Supreme
Court rejected 12 petitions by opponents
to the disengagement plan, ruling the pullout
was legal and does not violate the settlers’ human
rights. The court also rescinded four financial
arrangements relating to compensation for
the future evacuees:
- The court rejected a clause which would
have barred recipients of compensation
from filing a standard lawsuit for damages.
- The court, rejecting a deadline specified
by the law, allowed settlers 30 days
to choose the nature of the compensation
plan they preferred.
- The court ruled that settlers under 21
may receive compensation. The law had set
21 as the minimum age for receipt of compensation
funds.
- The court ruled that the day of actual
evacuation will be used as the date used
to determine the elements of the compensation
package for each family, rather than June
4, 2004, as stated by the law.
The army sent thousands
of soldiers to every settlement in
the Gaza
Strip on
August 15, 2005 with notices informing the Jews
that they were required to leave their homes
and that those who left before the 17th would
receive assistance from the IDF. Afterward,
it was illegal for Israelis to stay and,
at midnight on August 16, those that remained
were to lose a significant portion of
their compensation.
The evacuation started on August
17, 2005, and was expected to take about a month,
but the operation went so smoothly that the
civilians were evacuated from Gaza by August
22 and the West Bank the following day.
Compensation
Most of the Jews living
in Gaza at the time of evacuation were children. More than 46 percent
were under 14, 10 percent were between 15 and
19, approximately 15 percent were in their
20s and 28 percent were between 30 and 59
years-old. Originally, the compensation law
allowed everyone over the age of 21, who
lived at least five consecutive years in
a settlement to be evacuated, to apply for
a $560 grant per year. The Supreme Court
ruling noted above, however, said younger
settlers should also be eligible. Evacuated settlers were eligible for a moving grant
of approximately $2,100 for a family of three, $3,200 for a family of
four or five; and $4,200 for a family of six or more.
New legislation would allow
those building their own home to get a rental grant for a year with
the option to renew for another year with the proper documents.
Settlers who relocated to the Galilee or Negev would be eligible for
a $30,000 bonus. In the most recent incarnation of the compensation
bill, settlers moving to Ashkelon would get similar amounts. Alternative land would also be offered in
those areas instead of cash on a first-come-first serve basis.
Land was to be compensated at the rate of $50,000 per
dunam (4 dunams = 1 acre), with the value to be matched to land in the
south. Homes would be compensated at a rate per meter. Residents living
in prefabricated homes built by the Housing Ministry would be compensated
at the rate of approximately $620 per square meter. Those living in
homes built by the Housing Ministry or private contractors would be compensated
at the rate of approximately $780 per square meter. Those living in
build-your-own-home projects would receive roughly $935 per square meter.
The most recent compensation bill added an additional $100 in value for every
meter of construction.
Settlers who lived in the
area for a least two years are entitled
to more money. New legislation called for
an increase in the amount of individual
compensation per year that a person has lived
in the Gaza Strip from $550 a year to almost
$1,100 a year. In the new compensation bill,
a family of four that lived in the Gaza
Strip for four years would receive a total
compensation package of $113,000 (up from
$76,000), and a family of five that lived
there for six years would receive about
$264,000 (up from $192,000). The average
family should receive about $450,000.
Farmers were also offered three options to receive
land to farm and a plot on which to build a house. If the farmer accepts
the agricultural land he receives $30,000 less in compensation fees;
if he takes the plot of land on which to build a home, he receives $60,000
less in compensation; if he accepts both plots, he receives $90,000
less. A farmer who agrees to receive a plot with land for both agriculture
and a home, in the preferred areas of the Negev or the Galilee, is eligible
to receive 80 dunams of land. A second option provides for an agricultural
plot closer to the Gaza border while living away from that plot. In
such a case, he is eligible to receive 40 dunams ready for farming and
a second agricultural plot of 40 dunams that he can develop on his own.
In the third option, he can choose to have a farm of 40 dunams in a
sought-after area such as Nitzan, for which the government will pay
up to $3,000 a dunam, along with a half-dunam plot on which to build
a home, as provided to all evacuees who want to build their own home,
under the disengagement implementation law. Should the farmer currently
have less than 40 dunams in Gaza, but want to expand his farm, the government
will pay $1,500 per dunam and not $3,000 for the additional dunams.
After the Palestinians rejected
a plan by which the United States would use
foreign aid funds to pay Israeli settlers
to transfer their greenhouses to the Palestinian
Authority, a deal was brokered whereby
the European-funded Economic Cooperation
Foundation was to purchase the hothouses
for $14 million and then execute the transfer.
The money was being contributed by James
Wolfensohn, the special American envoy for
the disengagement and former head of the
World Bank (who donated $500,000), and several
of his friends. The deal included 90 percent
of the greenhouses; the remainder had already
been dismantled by their owners.
Workers who lost their jobs as a result of the disengagement
were eligible for unemployment benefits ranging from minimum wage
(about $770) to twice the average salary (about $3,200) for up to six
months. Workers between the ages of 50 to 55 would be eligible for a
years' compensation, and those over 55 years old would be given a pension
until they are 67 years of age, based on normative standards.
A special category was created for compensation for
communities that moved en masse that included the government's commitment
to replace communal buildings such as synagogues. In cases where a community
did not move together and the communal property was lost, individuals
would receive compensation for donations made to those buildings.
Tax on compensation sums given to business owners would
be reduced from 10 to five percent.
The Prime Minister's Office
ordered that 1,500 housing units, one
for each settler family evacuated,
be prepared by the Construction and Housing
Ministry. To provide for the extra homes,
the Housing Ministry doubled the number of
apartments made available in
the Negev region, with most located in Ashkelon, Ashdod, and Beersheba. According to Construction and Housing Director-General Shmuel Abuav, “The prime minister has said that
we have to give options to all the families,
so that there will not be any reason for
anyone to be in a tent or without a roof.”
The housing ministry estimated that as many
as one-third of the settlers might decide
to take the compensation money from the government
and find their own housing. The rest were
originally to be housed in caravans in clustered
communities across the Negev. The cost to
the government of caravans, however, is more
than five times that of apartments.
On September
7, 2005, the disengagement cabinet approved
a regulation enabling those who did not
leave by midnight August 14 - when Gaza
was closed to Israelis - to receive their
full compensation, even though they waited
until the IDF evacuated them. Prior
to the implementation of the disengagement,
the government said that those who would
not leave of their own free will would
lose 30 percent in special compensation
payments.
The total cost of the evacuation
package adopted by the Knesset was 3.8 billion
shekels, approximately $870 million; however,
in
light of the increase in the number of compensation
claims after disengagement, the Knesset's
Finance Committee approved on September 19,
2005, the allocation of an additional
1.5 billion shekels (roughly $250 million).
Approximately $176 million was to
be given directly to the evacuees and an
additional $66 million to the owners of private businesses, while
the remaining sum was allocated to
finance the government's pullout-related
expenses, mainly those of the defense,
agriculture and housing ministries.
In April 2007, a ministerial
committee approved the addition of nearly
$125 million to the compensation
budget for families evacuated from Gush Katif
and northern Samaria.
In June 2010, according to a report released by the State Commission of Inquiry into the Handling by the Authorized Authorities of the Evacuees from Gush Katif and Northern Samaria, 70 percent of evacuees who were forcibly removed from their homes in August 2005 still lacked permanent housing and were living in temporary dwellings. Published close to five years after the evacuation of the settlements, the 488-page report documented how the government failed to resettle and properly compensate the 9,000 people removed from 21 communities in the Gaza Strip and four in northern Samaria.
On July 31, 2011, Israel's Cabinet approved an $87 million agreement that ended damage claims for compensation by Jewish evacuees.
Sources: Jerusalem
Post,
(September 13, 2004, October 25, 2004, November
1-2, 2004, February
8, 2005, February
16, 2005, May
9, 2005, August 12, 2005; September
19, 2005, April
25, 2007; January
7, 2009; June 16, 2010); IMRA,
(September 26, 2004); JTA, (April 7, 2005; July 21, 2011); Ha'aretz,
(June 13, 2005); JTA, (December 19, 2007) |