Kahlon Eyes Palestinian Death Penalty For Selling Homes To Jews As Housing Price Control Tool

Kahlon ordered the preparation of the report following the lackluster performance of his flagship housing initiative.

Tel Aviv, August 16 – Rising real estate prices have put the purchase of a home beyond the reach of most Israelis who seek to live near where the bulk of jobs are, leading the Minister of Finance to consider a measure borrowed from Palestinian law, under which sale of property to a Jew carries the death penalty.

Moshe Kahlon, who has struggled to demonstrate lasting or effective fulfillment of a campaign promise to bring down housing prices, especially for young couples and families, instructed aides this week to prepare an analysis of the effect of a Palestinian-type law barring such sales to Jews – on penalty of death – would have on Israeli housing prices.

The mechanism of such a law would be straightforward: suppression of home sales, which would cause prices to drop and make real estate affordable for those currently unable to muster a down payment, let alone decades of mortgage payments. A provision that allows the Minister of Finance, or a committee, to suspend the law could be included to forestall a permanent real estate depression.

Analysts note that Kahlon ordered the preparation of the report following the lackluster performance of his flagship initiative, a lottery to grant favorable prices on new homes to several thousand applicant households. “Kahlon is having trouble adapting his assumptions about the housing market to the real world,” explained Hillel Gershuni, a critic of government intervention in markets. “He seems not to grasp the basics of supply and demand. You can’t artificially suppress prices by law, and you can’t force homes onto market by taxing them. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised he’s looking for a top-down, imposed solution, since that’s the only thing he knows how to do.”

Commentators doubt whether such a law would pass, let alone work. “There are significant hurdles to this kind of legislation,” warned Lahav Harkov, who covers the Knesset for the Jerusalem Post. “Not everyone in the political alliance that composes the Coalition is gung-ho about socialist intervention in the market. While there are precious few free-market capitalists walking the halls of power, I can’t see them lining up to support this kind of thing.”

“But you can probably expect the thirteen members of the Joint List, and certainly Meretz and a couple of Zionist Union MKs to swing the other way,” she argued. “The only political downside for them voting in favor of such a law is the awkwardness of capital punishment. The political left in Israel has always been squeamish about having Jews killed by anyone but Arabs.”

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