Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

West Bank Settlements Matched Tel Aviv for Home Building, Despite Smaller Population Rise

Housing construction in the West Bank matched the number of units built in Tel Aviv between 1996 and 2008 while its population grew at just half the rate of Tel Aviv’s, according to a study carried out for the Israeli Institute for Economic Planning.

The authors of the report said the figures demonstrated that the government can, in fact, expand the housing supply when it makes the sale of land a priority. The housing market’s main problem, they concluded, is the inefficient way land is marketed due to the stranglehold on the market by the Israel Lands Administration, which has a near monopoly over land inside Israel.

The institute, headed by Dror Strum, a former antitrust commissioner, said that maintaining the ILA’s monopoly will stymie any attempts at improving the situation, even if the Trajtenberg Committee’s recommendations and reforms to planning commissions are implemented.

According to the study, conducted for the institute by EGP Applied Economics, the ILA sold just 60% of the amount of land stipulated by the government between 1990 and 2010 and 55% of the amount needed to keep up with the growth of new households.

Read more at Haaretz.com.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.