Community settlement

A community settlement (Hebrew: יישוב קהילתי, Yishuv Kehilati) is a type of town in Israel. While in an ordinary town anyone may buy property, in a community settlement the town's residents, who are organized in a cooperative, can veto a sale of a house or a business to an undesirable buyer.

By this selection process, a community settlement may have a particular shared ideology or religious perspective which they wish to perpetuate by accepting only like-minded individuals. Other community settlements have no particular ideology, but still select residents to maintain a desired quality of life, or a desired lifestyle. For example, many community settlements will not accept people with criminal records. Many will only accept young married couples, to perpetuate the lifestyle of a town full of children, rather than ending up with a retirement community or with a town of wealthy middle-aged individuals who could afford the rising house prices.

Legal structure

Legally, a community settlement operates as a cooperative in which all residents must be members. To enforce the restrictions on reselling property, property on a community settlement is formally not sold, but rather leased. The land of the entire settlement is owned by one entity (usually the Jewish National Fund through the Israel Land Administration), which leases out individual plots only to members of the cooperative. In that sense, a community settlement is much like a town-sized housing cooperative.

The residents cooperative may also own and operate property and businesses, and this is often used for keeping certain public facilities, such as preschool, synagogues, grocery stores, sport facilities, youth clubs, swimming pools, etc., in the hands of the entire community. However, unlike a kibbutz or a moshav, the economic cooperation between residents is very loose - most residents work outside the settlement, and residents only pay minimal property taxes to the cooperative to help maintain the town and its public facilities.

Note that despite a popular misconception, the mere existence of community-owned facilities is not what differentiates communal settlements from ordinary towns, as most ordinary towns also have the same types of facilities - preschool, synagogues, sport centers and sometimes even swimming pools - owned and operated by the town. Likewise, the mere existence of a democratic body of residents which makes decisions and organizes events for the whole community is not a defining feature of community settlements: Ordinary towns also have their own local governments which are democratically elected by their residents.

Most community settlements are small, with no more than several hundreds residents, and are therefore too small to form their own separate formal municipalities. Instead, the residents' cooperative is recognized by the state of Israel as a local committee. Several such local committees can, for example, form together a regional council, which is one of the three types of local government in Israel. In practice, the regional council often has more impact on the resident's life than the cooperative of their own settlement: It is the regional council which will normally run schools, build roads, collect property taxes, and even run its own screening process.

Common features

As explained above, what really sets apart a community settlement from an ordinary town is its ability to select its residents. However, when one looks at the 150 or so community settlements in Israel, more common features can be spotted in most, though not all, community settlements. These common features include:

• Community settlements are predominantly rural and exurban. As explained above, the land of most community settlements is owned by the Israel Land Administration; One of this organization's explicit goal is to populate Israel's peripheral areas, rather than have the population continue to gravitate toward its central Gush Dan area.
• Houses in Community settlements are predominantly, if not exclusively, single-family homes and not apartment buildings. This fact can also be explained by desire to spread the population over the land. Another reason is that the availability of affordable single-family houses was also one of the main attraction points of the new towns, especially for families with young children. Finally, building an apartment building is a much more complex financial enterprise for the cooperative than each family building its own home out of its own funds.
• Community settlements are predominantly small, with a few hundreds of residents. This is caused by a combination of the town's young age, the typically small area or land allocated to the town, and the desire to build only single-family houses. Many community settlements start out small, with only few dozen families, and over the years slowly grow and ceept new families.
• Residents of community settlements are typically very involved in their community. They volunteer for the various committees that run the town and its facilities, they often meet together for various events and celebrations, and a genuine feeling of community is often felt (which is why that word was used to describe this form of settlement).
• The population of community settlements is almost exclusively Jewish, despite Jews constituting only 75% of Israel's population. Some community settlements openly require applicants to be Jews (e.g., by declaring themselves a religious community), while others find more indirect ways to reject Arab candidates. Another problem for non-Jews is that the Jewish National Fund, the owner of the land in many community settlements, views itself as a Jewish organization whose mission is to spread the Jewish population, and therefore refuses to lease to non-Jews. See more in "Controversy" below.

History and today

The first community settlement in Israel was Neve Monosson, in Gush Dan which was established in 1953. Many Israeli settlements on throughout the West Bank are set up as community settlements; there are also many such communities in the Galilee and elsewhere in rural northern Israel. Most community settlements in Israel are relatively small, with a few hundred or thousand residents. Some communities are even smaller, with fewer than 30 residents. Some communities cater to specific populations, such as the Haredi town of Betar Illit.

Controversy

To permanently move to a community settlement one must join the cooperative. An interview and acceptance process is often required to join the cooperative and move into the community.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel has charged that this screening process is designed to deny membership to Arabs, and that sometimes Jews of specific ethnic or socio-economic groups are also discriminated against. Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights issued a press release:

On 6 January 2009, the Supreme Court of Israel issued an order nisi (order to show cause) that compels the state to respond within 60 days to a petition filed by Adalah demanding the cancellation of admission committees in “community towns”, which select among candidates who wish to live in these towns.Overwhelmingly, these admissions committees exclude Arab families, Eastern Jews, single-parent families, gays, unmarried persons and other social groups from “community towns”.

Adalah

However, these communities are predominantly self-selective. Many communities are open and welcoming to all who wish to join their community.