Israel-Palestine Mega Fact Check!

According to Human Rights Watch, 93% of the land in Israel is owned by the state, 13% of which is owned by the Jewish National Fund (JNF). The JNF forbids leasing to non-Jews, which means that 13% is out-of-reach for Arabs. "While by law Arab citizens can lease land owned directly by the state and not transferred to the JNF, in practice numerous obstacles limit Arab citizens’ access to land… According to Adalah, a human rights organization representing the Arab minority in Israel, Arab citizens are blocked from leasing about 80% of the land controlled by the state." One of the methods used to exclude Arabs are Selection Committees which determine who can gain admittance to communities with <500 households. These committees always include a senior official in the Jewish Agency or the Zionist Organization, and "have notoriously been used to exclude Arabs from living in rural Jewish communities."

“The Israeli government’s policy of boxing in Palestinian communities extends beyond the West Bank and Gaza to Palestinian towns and villages inside Israel, Human Rights Watch said ... The policy discriminates against Palestinian citizens of Israel and in favor of Jewish citizens, sharply restricting Palestinians’ access to land for housing to accommodate natural population growth. Decades of land confiscations and discriminatory planning policies have confined many Palestinian citizens to densely populated towns and villages that have little room to expand. Meanwhile, the Israeli government nurtures the growth and expansion of neighboring predominantly Jewish communities, many built on the ruins of Palestinian villages destroyed in 1948.”