Six years ago, when Irene Grossman purchased her home in Talbiyeh, an upscale neighbourhood in central Jerusalem, she knew the Greek Orthodox Church owned the land.
But she never dreamed that the church – the second largest landowner in the country after the Israeli government – would secretly sell the land out from under her.
Like thousands of Israeli property owners, Grossman believed that the church, which in 1950 leased the land to the Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund, a Jewish land-procurement agency, would renew the lease once it expired in 2051.
Instead, the financially strapped church quietly sold the land two years ago to a group of private investors who, Grossman said, are now asking homeowners to shell out “large” sums of money to buy the land under their properties outright.
“Property prices are down,” said Grossman, because buyers are deterred by the uncertainty of the situation. Grossman heads a group called Citizens Property Rights that is trying to find a solution for approximately 1,100 homeowners affected by the sale.
The sale of church-owned land is a hot-button topic in Israel, where private homes, hotels and even the Israeli parliament stand on parcels that various churches leased to them decades ago.
“Property prices are down.”
– Irene Grossman, head of Citizens Property Rights.
Some Palestinians in east Jerusalem are in a similar bind; others accuse the churches of selling land to Jewish investors who, they believe, are seeking to strengthen Israel’s foothold in predominantly Arab east Jerusalem, which Palestinians hope will be the capital of their future state.
While no one denies that the churches have the right to sell their property, many have questioned the lack of transparency surrounding the transactions from both the church and KKL-JNF.
Read the article by Michele Chabin in Sight Magazine.