Is Israel suicidal?

Vast tracts of Israeli agricultural land in north Israel's Galilee area have been bought up by Arabs with financial backing from the Gulf, Israeli public radio reported on Saturday.
It said dozens of hectares (acres) have been bought and that a local farmers' association had tried in vain to warn the Israeli authorities about the sale.

The radio station quoted Agriculture Minister Shalom Simhon as saying the affair was not a matter for his department since "it concerns private land."

Galilee and the Negev desert in the south are relatively lightly populated, and Israel has a minister, Sylvan Shalom, charged specifically with development.

Much of the country's Israeli Arab population of around 1.4 million people lives in the Galilee.

On August 3 the Israeli parliament passed a controversial land reform law that allows local officials to privatise publicly owned land, triggering the ire of the Arab minority.

Arab MPs said the law, which is backed by hardline Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, would block efforts by Palestinians who fled the creation of Israel in 1948 to recover their property or seek compensation for what they have lost.

The new law allows local municipal officials to sell off state land in urban centres and maintains a previous ban on the sale to non-Jews of land controlled by the Keren Kayemet LeIsrael Jewish agency.

What are we to make of this? Is this story true?

Sadly and infuriatingly, it's true

The Knesset last month passed passed a bill that mandates the sale of 400,000 dunams of the Land of Israel by 2014, the equivalent of 400 square kilometers, or 155 square miles (nearly 99,000 acres). The law allows another 400,000 dunams to be sold after 2014.

Kadima Knesset Member Nachman Shai slammed the same in a news release, saying "Israeli lands are being sold to the highest bidder," just as expected and feared during the vote on land reform.

"The Israel Land Authorities reform is a loophole calling out to the robber, and it will attract, as expected, Arab investors from abroad, who will eventually gain control over significant pieces of land in Israel," Shai said.

Meretz head Chaim Oron also pointed to the sale as proof that the land reform bill had been "misguided."

This is one of those rare times when I totally opposed a law by Bibi. He meant well but we all know where good intentions lead.

He wanted to bring down the price of land so that Israelis woudl find it easier to buy and build new homes. But being a democracy, Israel cannot bar Arabs from buying land and... here we are.

I'm not a lawyer but IMHO Israel could introduce a clause that would bar foreigners, or at least foreigners from countries with no diplomatic relations with Israel, from buying land and that would mainly solve the problem. AFAIK Switzerland does not allow non-citizens to own land or property there. If it's good enough for the Swiss it should be good enough from Israel. But we are always trying to be holier than the Pope, or more democratic than ... I can't think of an analogy.