Was your land seized? Too bad

A district master plan for central Israel reclassified certain agricultural lands as "green lungs," meaning land for leisure. The upshot was compensation claims totaling billions of shekels against various local councils. And the upshot of that - we don't know. The battle between the local authority, the government and the little man staggers on.

What the claimants are discovering is that the authorities aren't exactly willing to acknowledge, let alone consider, damage caused to them. The bureaucracy is sluggish to a point that could be considered callous. Requests to extend deadlines are ignored. A relatively recent development is legislation proposals that would slap caps on potential compensation for land expropriation.

Take what happened at a hearing on a claim for NIS 90 million in compensation, submitted by the Baptists Village association pursuant to Article 197 of the Planning and Building law. The article enables the local authority to be sued for impaired property values due to planning.

The Baptists claimed that the value of 150 dunams of land had indeed been reduced by being rezoned from farmland to national park, between the Segula Intersection and the Yarkon river. After the local planning committee rejected their claim, they appealed in 2005. Since then, the appeals tribunal has held many a session to address their problem, and even replaced chairman twice. In December 2008 the appeals committee decided to appoint a land appraiser, whose ruling would be binding.

Meanwhile, the local planning committee did everything it could to delay matters. It objected to the appraiser named to the case. It enlisted the attorney general and motioned to have the hearing suspended. The appeals committee rejected these motions, at which point the local planning committee appealed to the district court, which temporarily suspended the legal process until it could hand down a ruling.

"It isn't clear by what authority the attorney general sought to stop clarification of this case after a binding appraiser was appointed," said Zvi Shuv, the lawyer representing the Baptists Village. Once a ruling is made, it's made, Shuv argued: "The appeals committee decided to appoint an appraiser, meaning, compensation would be due." Nobody can simply roll back the clock, he stated.

The attorney general's office stated that the attorney general isn't trying to block claims from being filed under Article 197. The attorney general wanted to be present at the hearings because of their vast implications, the office said. His official position would be provided to the appeals committee at the proper time.

"In the past, land owners were less aware of their rights, so less claims were made," said Shuv. "Awareness developed over the years, leading to an outbreak of claims. These claims have caused hysteria in the local authorities and government, which are now fighting against them." Hence the delays.

Amendment 90 to the Planning and Building law, a product of the Interior Ministry, is one way to castrate any nascent claims. The amendment has many chapters listing the criteria for filing compensation claims under Article 197.

For example, the amendment states that no compensation is due on a piece of land's "potential."

Nehama Bugin, a lawyer and land assessor, notes that the amendment hasn't come into force yet - but the courts have already ruled against compensating for "lost potential." It's just another attempt to avoid paying compensation, she said.

"It's like refusing to consider the topographical structure or the location of the land, which is unthinkable. These are integral elements when estimating the value of an asset. It's why a dunam in the Sharon is worth more than one in the Galilee."

Before the rezoning, deals in the Baptists Village priced the land at about $100,000 per dunam, Shuv said. But if the potential is ignored, compensation could fall as low as $5,000 per dunam. If that's the way it is, "then there's no difference between the Gaza Strip and Tel Aviv," Shuv said. But when the little man is the pocket at stake, he'll have to pay a lot more for Tel Aviv.

In practice, the authorities are ignoring potential. Take the case of active farmland located southeast of the neighborhood of Beit Eliezer in Hadera, east of the town Elyachin. A new plan published in 2005 called for a road that passed through much of the land. An assessor acting for the owners appraised the damage at $43,000 per dunam, because of the potential that Hadera would expand.

The district appeals committee appointed a binding appraiser and directed him to ignore the potential.

Under Article 197, compensation claims can be submitted only within three years of a plan's approval. Beyond that obstacle, the Interior Ministry does not smile upon requests to extend the deadline. It never has for Moshe Kamar.

Kamar's clients include the owners of a large nursery in Rishon Letzion. In 2000 a plan rezoned the land from agricultural to infrastructure to make way for a road. The nursery owners heard of the plan only in 2005.

That September, Kamar motioned the minister for an extension. He never received an answer.

In another case, in October 2007, he asked for an extension to appeal a plan approved in 1998, which rezoned land in Herzliya in order to expand the Ayalon Highway at the expense of private landowners, foreign residents who hadn't known of the plan.

Why do people wake up years late? Because they hadn't known of the plan, or hadn't realized they had only three years to object, Kamar said. They only find out when the land is actually expropriated - at which point the state does have to provide personal notice, before a bulldozer starts digging up their garden gnomes. And by that time, it's generally too late to appeal.

"It's absurd," Kamar said. "Who can provide an extension? The interior minister. Who pays the claims? The authorities subject to the Interior Ministry. What sense does that make? Why would the ministry approve claims?"

The ministry said that from 2005 until now, it has received hundreds of requests to extend deadlines under Article 197 to the Planning and Building Law. It has a procedure and examines each claim individually, it stated.