The Israeli government’s own review of unauthorized outposts, summarized in English by the Prime Minister’s Office on 10 March 2005, records that the Ministry of Construction & Housing spent NIS 71,870,000 on them from 2000 to 2004. That is the ministry’s own reported total and, on the summary’s account, a floor. When a fence, a herd and a few caravans appear on a West Bank hilltop without a cabinet decision, the practical question is whose budget put them there: that review, written by attorney Talya Sason, names the housing ministry, the Ministry of Defense, the Civil Administration and the World Zionist Organization’s Settlement Division. Its published counts carry no farm category.
Key Findings
- The Ministry of Construction & Housing reported spending NIS 71,870,000 on unauthorized outposts from 2000 to 2004, its own reported total, which the government-commissioned Sason review says understates the ministry’s working schemes (Prime Minister’s Office of Israel, 2005).
- Of the 140 caravans placed in the territories under the state’s 2003 acquisition, 90 went to unauthorized outposts, and a further 64 were conveyed to outposts between 18 August and 5 December 2004, on government data published by a party to the events (Prime Minister’s Office of Israel, 2005).
- Of the 105 unauthorized outposts known to the review in March 2005, a count it says “probably does not reflect the true number,” 26 stood on State land, a figure published by a party to the events (Prime Minister’s Office of Israel, 2005).
- A 1979 government resolution, adopted after the High Court’s unanimous Elon Moreh judgment of 22 October 1979, confined settlements to State land, and the 2005 review defines an outpost as a site with no government decision behind it (Prime Minister’s Office of Israel, 2005; Israeli Supreme Court, 1979).
- The Oslo II Interim Agreement of 28 September 1995 defines “the Settlements” as those in Area C, where Israel transferred only civil powers “not relating to territory” (Israel and the PLO, 1995).
Which state bodies pay for outposts, by Israel’s own review?
The Prime Minister’s Office of Israel published in March 2005 the summary of an opinion it had commissioned from attorney Talya Sason, and that summary records NIS 71,870,000 spent by the Ministry of Construction & Housing on unauthorized outposts from 2000 to 2004. The figure is the ministry’s own reported total, stated by its Rural Building Administration, and the summary says it does not reconcile with the ministry’s working schemes.
The Sason summary (Prime Minister’s Office of Israel, 2005) names three sets of bodies in the financing and servicing of unauthorized outposts: the Ministry of Construction & Housing, through its Rural Building Administration; the Ministry of Defense and its Civil Administration; and the Settlement Division of the World Zionist Organization. Its central finding is a single passage: “The problem is State and public authorities took part in breaking the law. They are the ones who financed construction without a resolution by the political echelon, in contrary to government resolutions, with no legal planning status, sometimes not on State owned land, sometimes on private Palestinian property or on survey land.”
The review was commissioned by the government whose ministries it examined, and the Foreign Ministry posted the English text. Its data carry a stated gap. The outpost information came from the Infrastructure Department of the Civil Administration, which, Sason writes, did not deliver all of it. The shekel figure is therefore a floor in two senses: a self-report from the spending ministry, and a total built on a partial list.
How long has state money for outposts been on the official record?
The Israeli government’s own review counted 105 unauthorized outposts in March 2005 and found that state authorities financed outpost construction, a finding published by a party to the events. The Sason summary (Prime Minister’s Office of Israel, 2005) states that state and public authorities paid for outposts that no cabinet had approved.
The finding that ministries paid for outposts built without a government decision has stood on the government’s own record since 10 March 2005, when the Foreign Ministry posted the English summary of a review the government itself had commissioned.
The base rate sits in the same document. The figure of 105 was the number “that I know of today,” in Sason’s words, and the summary immediately adds that it “probably does not reflect the true number of outposts in the area.” It is a floor. Of those 105, the summary dates 71 to before March 2001 and 24 to afterwards, and 10 have an establishment date the author had “yet to find out.” Those 10 undated sites mean the two dated groups cannot be read as the whole.
The 2005 counts are broken down by land status and by date, not by use, so the review cannot be read for the share of outposts that were farms. The farm category in the current reporting is a later distinction, drawn by the bodies that produced the later figures. For the wider record on outposts in Israel’s own reviews and court rulings, see Israel’s own record on unauthorized outposts.
Why do budget lines rarely name an outpost?
The 2005 Sason review defines an unauthorized outpost by its characteristic A: “There was no government decision to establish it, and in any case no authorized political echelon approved its establishment.” Since a 1979 government resolution, adopted after the High Court of Justice’s Elon Moreh ruling, Israeli settlements were to be established “only on State land.” An outpost sits outside the decision requirement by definition.
A budget line in Israel’s system attaches to a decision, a program or a body. An outpost, as the Sason summary (Prime Minister’s Office of Israel, 2005) defines it, has no decision to attach to. Spending that reaches it therefore travels under a heading that names something else. The one official figure in the summary illustrates the point: the NIS 71,870,000 was reported through the Rural Building Administration of the Ministry of Construction & Housing, a general administrative heading, and the summary reconstructs it as outpost spending only after the fact.
The 1979 test has two sources that are often merged. The High Court of Justice, in HCJ 390/79 Dweikat v. Government of Israel, decided unanimously, 5 to 0, on 22 October 1979, declared Order of Possession 16/79 invalid as to the petitioners’ lands and ordered the civilian settlers removed from them (Israeli Supreme Court, 1979). Deputy President Landau, writing the leading opinion, applied a dominant-purpose test and found that “the military consideration was subordinate to the primary, political decision to build the settlement.”
The judgment did not lay down the State-land rule. Landau wrote that taking private land for a civilian settlement “is potentially justified under Article 52 of the Hague Regulations” where military needs in practice prompted it. The State-land rule is a government resolution taken after the ruling, which the Sason summary reports. A court judgment and an executive decision are different record types.
What the record shows is narrow and dated. The government’s own 2005 definition places outposts outside any cabinet decision. The government’s own 2005 finding records that ministries financed them “without a resolution by the political echelon.” Together the two place outpost spending under headings that name a body or a program rather than a site.
How did housing caravans reach outposts through state purchasing?
The Sason summary, published by the Prime Minister’s Office in 2005, records that 90 of the 140 caravans placed in the territories under the state’s 2003 acquisition went to unauthorized outposts. The counts come from Israeli government data supplied to the review, a party’s own reported figures, and the summary attaches no shekel value to them.
A caravan is an in-kind transfer. The state buys a housing unit through procurement and a body places it on a site, so the expenditure appears as a purchase rather than as a grant to the site that receives it. The Sason summary (Prime Minister’s Office of Israel, 2005) records a second batch: a further 64 caravans conveyed to unauthorized outposts between 18 August and 5 December 2004. That window of under four months falls after the 2003 acquisition, and the summary reports the two counts separately.
The counts have three limits. First, they carry no money value, so they cannot be added to the NIS 71,870,000 reported by the Ministry of Construction & Housing, and the summary does not say whether that figure includes the caravans. Second, the definition of an outpost in the summary covers a site “not attached to an existing settlement, but rather at least a few hundred meters distant from it as the crow flies.” Caravans placed in unauthorized neighborhoods inside or adjoining recognized settlements therefore fall outside the 90 and the 64. Third, the counts come from the same incomplete Civil Administration data the summary describes elsewhere.
The caravan counts give a shape to the funding question that a cash total cannot. Housing is the first thing an outpost needs, and on the government’s own account, 90 of the 140 caravans placed in the territories under the 2003 acquisition went to unauthorized outposts, sites that no cabinet had approved.
Is land itself part of the support an outpost receives?
Of the 105 unauthorized outposts the Sason review knew of in March 2005, 26 stood on State land, on the land-status count the Prime Minister’s Office published. That is a party’s own figure, drawn from Civil Administration data. The summary sorts the remainder into survey land, Palestinian private property and mixed land, and leaves part of it unresolved.
The full breakdown in the Sason summary (Prime Minister’s Office of Israel, 2005) is 26 on State land, 7 on survey land, 15 on Palestinian private property, and 39 on “mixed” land, “part State, part survey, part owned by Palestinians.” The four categories account for 87 outposts. The remaining 18 stood on land “which I failed yet to resolve its nature,” in the summary’s words. The summary never totals the three non-State categories, and the unresolved 18 mean any such total is a floor.
Whether a parcel counts as State land is decided by older instruments. The Ottoman Land Code of 1858, in F. Ongley’s unofficial English translation of 1892, divides land into five classes. Among them is “Arazi Mirie. Crown lands, belonging to the state exchequer,” and Article 6 defines dead land (mevat) as waste land beyond earshot of a village, “about a mile and a half” (Ottoman Empire, 1858). On how West Bank land becomes State land, the Code’s articles are the starting point.
Military Order 59 of 31 July 1967, signed by the Commander of IDF Forces in the West Bank Area, defines Government Property by ownership on 7 June 1967 by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan or another enemy state. Its Article 2 reads, in Hebrew: “הממונה רשאי ליטול את החזקה ברכוש ממשלתי ולנקוט כל צעד הנראה לו דרוש לכך” (in a working rendering, “The Custodian may take possession of Government Property and take any step he deems necessary for that”) (Commander of IDF Forces in the West Bank Area, 1967). The 1967 text contains no declaration procedure.
Which authority governs the land where farming outposts sit?
The Oslo II Interim Agreement, signed by Israel and the PLO on 28 September 1995, defines “the Settlements” in Article XII(5) as “in the West Bank the settlements in Area C.” Under Article XVII(4)(a), Israel, “through its military government,” holds authority over areas outside the Palestinian Council’s territorial jurisdiction. That allocation matches the bodies the 2005 review names: the Ministry of Defense and its Civil Administration.
The Agreement, quoted here from the text the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs published as a party to it (Israel and the PLO, 1995), defines Area C residually in Article XI(3): “areas of the West Bank outside Areas A and B.” Areas A and B are defined by red lines and shading on a map, so Area C is whatever the map leaves. Article XI(2) sets out what moved in Area C: “Israel will transfer to the Council civil powers and responsibilities not relating to territory.” Land, planning and zoning in Area C remained with Israel’s military government.
That is why a civilian ministry’s housing purchase or an agricultural grant reaches an Area C site through a military administration. The Ministry of Defense and the Civil Administration appear in the Sason summary (Prime Minister’s Office of Israel, 2005) as bodies servicing outposts because the Agreement left territorial authority in Area C with them. Background on jurisdiction under the Interim Agreement covers the clauses in full.
The Agreement also set a schedule. Three further redeployments were to follow “each to take place after an interval of six months,” completing within 18 months of the Council’s inauguration. Annex I Article I(5) provides that “the Israeli Civil Administration will be dissolved” after that inauguration. That is what the text promised in 1995. The Sason summary of March 2005 names the Civil Administration as a functioning body, which dates its continued operation a decade later.
Article XXXI(7) binds both parties equally: “Neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations.”
Methodology and limitations
The evidence was drawn from five primary or official records.
The official records are:
- The English summary of the Sason opinion, posted by Israel’s Foreign Ministry on 10 March 2005 (Prime Minister’s Office of Israel, 2005). This is a government-commissioned review of the government’s own conduct, so its counts are a party’s own figures.
- The High Court of Justice judgment in HCJ 390/79 of 22 October 1979 (Israeli Supreme Court, 1979). It was read in the Cardozo Israeli Supreme Court Project’s unofficial English translation, made from a Hebrew text prepared by Nevo Press; the Hebrew governs.
- Military Order 59 of 1967, read in Hebrew in the Military Advocate General’s published Collection of Proclamations, Orders and Appointments. English renderings of it are working translations, since no official English text exists, and the order has nine later amendments.
- The Ottoman Land Code of 1858, quoted from F. Ongley’s unofficial 1892 translation as revised by Horace E. Miller.
- The Oslo II Interim Agreement, in the English text published by the Israeli Foreign Ministry as a party.
The Sason summary is not the full opinion, which is in Hebrew and much longer. Its outpost data came from the Civil Administration, which, the author states, did not deliver all of it. Its 105 outposts and its land-status counts are floors, and its definition excludes unauthorized building inside or adjoining recognized settlements. Its counts are not broken down by use, so they give no farm share.
No official total of state spending on outposts dated after March 2005 appears among the records cited here, so the NIS 71,870,000 for 2000 to 2004 is the only spending figure the report carries.
Conclusion
So whose budget put the fence, the herd and the caravans on the hilltop? On the Israeli government’s own 2005 review, a party’s own account, several budgets did, and none of them named the hilltop. The Ministry of Construction & Housing reported NIS 71,870,000 for 2000 to 2004, its own total and a floor. 90 of 140 caravans from the 2003 acquisition went to outposts. Only 26 of the 105 known outposts stood on State land. The Defense Ministry and its Civil Administration serviced sites in an Area C that the 1995 Agreement left under Israel’s military government.
The portrait the records draw is consistent. An outpost is defined by the decision no one took. Its housing arrives as procurement and its land arrives with an unresolved title. Its cash arrives under a general heading such as rural building. The last official tally is dated March 2005, and its author called her own count of outposts something that “probably does not reflect the true number.”
That leaves a question about public accounting in a democracy that spends through ministries. If a site exists outside every cabinet decision and is paid for under headings that never name it, which institution of the state that pays is positioned to count what it costs? And what changes for voters, courts and the people living beside these farms when the last official answer on the record is two decades old?
Frequently Asked Questions
How far from a settlement must a site be to count as an outpost in the 2005 review?
The Sason summary (Prime Minister’s Office of Israel, 2005) counts a site as an outpost only if it is “at least a few hundred meters distant” from an existing settlement “as the crow flies.” Unauthorized construction inside or adjoining recognized settlements is therefore outside its count of 105.
How many outposts did the state evacuate after the review period began?
Ministry of Defense data supplied to the Sason review record that “81 outposts were evacuated so far, only a few of them were manned.” This is the ministry’s own figure and covers only outposts established after March 2001. The summary notes that some were “occupied again and not yet evacuated,” so the 81 cannot be set against the 105.
What happened to the delimitation orders issued against outposts?
The same Ministry of Defense data in the Sason summary record 13 delimitation orders issued and 12 appeals against them granted. The summary gives no further breakdown of those cases.
Is the full Sason opinion available in English?
No. The Foreign Ministry posted an English summary on 10 March 2005, and the full opinion exists only in Hebrew and runs much longer. Detail that is not in the summary cannot be attributed to it.
Did the 1979 Elon Moreh ruling ban settlement on private land?
No. Deputy President Landau wrote that taking private land for a civilian settlement “is potentially justified under Article 52 of the Hague Regulations” where military needs in practice prompted it (Israeli Supreme Court, 1979). The order fell on the facts of that requisition. The Court also left Article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention undecided.
Can farmland under Ottoman law be lost for lying fallow?
Article 68 of the 1858 Code, in Ongley’s unofficial translation, provides that arable land left fallow “for three successive years” without valid excuse “becomes the right of Tapu.” The former holder may then recover it “for its equivalent value (Bedel Misl)” (Ottoman Empire, 1858). The article does not say the land reverts to the state.
Is there an official English text of Military Order 59?
No. The Military Advocate General’s Collection prints the 1967 order in Hebrew and Arabic only (Commander of IDF Forces in the West Bank Area, 1967). Its index lists nine amendments, the last being Order 1508, so the 1967 booklet is not the text in force.
Sources
- Commander of IDF Forces in the West Bank Area, 1967. Order Concerning Government Property (West Bank Area) (No. 59), 5727-1967. Collection of Proclamations, Orders and Appointments, booklet 5, p. 162. Military Advocate General. https://www.idf.il/media/drkeqiaj/%D7%97%D7%95%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%AA_5.pdf. Official record.
- Israel and the PLO, 1995. The Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (Oslo II), with Annex I and Annex III. Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. https://www.gov.il/en/Departments/General/the-israeli-palestinian-interim-agreement. Official record.
- Israeli Supreme Court, 1979. HCJ 390/79 Dweikat v. Government of Israel (the Elon Moreh case), judgment of 22 October 1979. Unofficial English translation, Cardozo Israeli Supreme Court Project. https://versa.cardozo.yu.edu/sites/default/files/upload/opinions/Dweikat%20et%20al.%20v.%20State.pdf. Official record (court judgment).
- Ottoman Empire, 1858. The Ottoman Land Code of 7 Ramazan 1274. Translated by F. Ongley, revised by Horace E. Miller. William Clowes and Sons, London, 1892. https://archive.org/details/32882019066664-theottomanlandc. Official record (enacted legislation, unofficial translation).
- Prime Minister’s Office of Israel, 2005. Summary of the Opinion Concerning Unauthorized Outposts, prepared by Talya Sason, Adv. Ministry of Foreign Affairs. https://www.gov.il/en/pages/summary-of-opinion-concerning-unauthorized-outposts-talya-sason-adv. Official record (government-commissioned review).