Talk:Community settlement

Whitewash

The first, defining, paragraph of a "communal settlement" now reads:

A communal settlement (Hebrew: יישוב קהילתי‎, Yishuv Kehilati) in Israel is type of cooperative community that in contrast to a kibbutz or a moshav involves no economic cooperation between the residents. Cooperation is on a societal level only; education, religious actives and public works are some issues planned based on communal decision making. Residents form a legal cooperative union that is recognised by the state as the local authority.

But this is whitewash (to use a gentle term - other people might call it hogwash). This "definition" is indeed the official definition given by officials in such towns, but on second reading, one soon realizes it actually defines nothing: In every city and town in Israel, the citizens of the town cooperate in a "societal level" in a exactly the same way described here - the town (or its elected officials) controls the schools (and especially preschool), religious activities (when the property is owned by the town), public works, public buildings and facilities, and so on. In this respect, there's nothing special about a "communal settlement". Every town in Israel also defines (via a democratic process) bylaws that residents must obide by, building codes, zoning codes, and so on - just like a communal settlement does. In fact, a communal settlement probably doesn't belong in the "cooperative settlements in Israel" category any more than an ordinary town does.

The first paragraph, to be NPOV, must explain the difference between a Yishuv Kehilati and a regular Israeli town or city, rather than give the party line definition of the term. And what is that difference?

Basically, the only significant difference between a communal settlement and a regular town or city is that the communal settlement, unlike a town or city, is allowed to choose its residents. In a communal settlement, you are not allowed to sell a house, and sometimes even rent one out, to someone unless that person gets "accepted" by the community's acceptance committee. There are hardly any laws saying what such a committee's acceptance standards should be, so various communal settlements have chosen various criteria including age (almost exclusively favoring young people), race (always favoring Jews), family status (usually favoring legally married couples with children), and creed (some places only allow observant Jews, one only allow people who practice meditation, another allows only vegeterians, and some allow only people who profess to being "Zionists"). All of this obviously doesn't happen and can't happen in a "normal" town - in a normal town you can just sell your house to anybody you we - be it a single Jew, a married Arab couple, a single mom with 7 kids, a gay couple, or an elderly Chinese investor.

This single difference between a "communal settlement" and a "town" explains another superficial difference often seen between the two forms of settlements: Almost always, "communal settlements" are composed entirely of private houses each on its own plot of land (often, but not always, half a dunam), while most regular towns contain a mixture of such private houses (often dubbed "villas") and apartment buildings. This superficial difference is closely tied to the main difference (of the acceptance committee), to the point where it's hard to decide which is the cause, and which is the result. On one hand, absent a very centralistic government (like in the USSR or even Israel in the 50s) building large apartment buildings usually requires a commercial enterprise. Such a commercial enterprise's goals ("sell at the highest price") doesn't sit well with a communal settlement's goal ("sell only to those who get accepted"). But perhaps more importantly, communal settlements have more often than not been started by the Jewish Agency. This organization owns huge swaths of land in Israel (most legally bought by Jewish philanthropists) and its goal is to fill as much of its land as possible with Jews. As such, it wants to create settlements which are both spread out (therefore private houses instead of apartment buildings) and housed by Jews only (hence prefering a communal settlement, which lets them prohibit non-Jews from living there).

84.111.4.103 (talk) 20:01, 30 August 2009 (UTC)