Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the highly influential Sephardi rabbi, yesterday publicly backed a controversial land sale of 2 million dunams to meet the religious law of shmita, obliging farmers to let land lie fallow for a year, a requirement that begins next week under the Jewish calendar.

Traditionally agricultural land is sold symbolically to non-Jews for the period during which cultivation is forbidden - which Jewish law calls the sabbatical year. The Jewish New Year, which begins tomorrow, marks the beginning of a sabbatical year. The nominal sale is meant to allow farmers to keep on cultivating agricultural land throughout the sabbatical year as the land technically is not theirs.