Community settlement
A communal settlement (Hebrew: יישוב קהילתי, Yishuv Kehilati) is a type of town in Israel. While in an ordinary town anyone may buy property, in a communal 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 communal settlement may have a particular shared ideology or religious perspective which they wish to perpetuate by accepting only like-minded individuals. Other communal settlements have no particular ideology, but still select residents to maintain a desired quality of life, or a desired lifestyle. For example, many communal 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 communal settlement operates as a cooperative in which all residents must be members. To enforce the restrictions on reselling property, property on a communal settlement is formally not sold, but rather leased. The land of the entire settlement is owned by one entity (usually the Jewish Agency), which leases out individual plots only to members of the cooperative. In that sense, a communal 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: Most ordinary towns and cities 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 which effect the whole community is not a defining feature of communal settlements: Ordinary towns and cities also have their own local governments democratically elected by their residents.
Most communal 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.
History and today
The first communal 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 communal settlements; there are also many such communities in the Galilee and elsewhere in rural northern Israel. Most communal 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 communal 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: [1]
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”.
However, these communities are predominantly self-selective.[citation needed] Many communities are open and welcoming to all who wish to join their community.[citation needed]