The pretty two-storey home with a red-tiled roof built by Adel and Iman Kaadan looks no different from the rows of other houses in Katzir, a small hilltop community in northern Israel close to the West Bank.
But, unlike the other residents of Katzir, the Kaadans moved into their dream home this month only after a 12-year battle through the Israeli courts.
The small victory for the Kaadans, who belong to Israel's Palestinian Arab minority, dealt a big blow to a state policy that for decades has reserved most of the country's land for Jews.
Katzir is one of 695 so-called "co-operative associations", communities mostly established since Israel's creation in 1948, whose chief purpose is to bar non-Jews from residency.
Last month, the Israeli parliament moved to enshrine in law the right of these associations, comprising nearly 70 per cent of all communities in Israel, to accept only Jews.
The Constitution, Law and Justice Committee approved a private members' bill that will uphold the right of the communities' admissions committees to continue excluding Arab citizens, who make up one-fifth of the population. The bill is expected to pass its final reading in the coming weeks.
Commentators have compared the legislation with South Africa's notorious apartheid laws such as the Group Areas Act. A leading jurist, Mordechai Kremnitzer, of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said the bill gave off the "foul odour of racism".
The legislation, both its supporters and opponents were agreed, was a rearguard action to prevent the possibility that other Arab citizens might be inspired to follow the Kaadans' example.
Israel Hasson, of the centrist Kadima party, who was among the bill's formulators, said it reflected "the state's commitment to the realisation of the Zionist vision" in Israel. That vision is embodied in a decades-old "Judaisation" programme to settle as many Jews as possible in the heavily Arab-populated north.
Suhad Bishara, a lawyer with the Adalah legal centre for the Arab minority, said that the long-standing practice of using admissions committees to weed out applications from Arab citizens was being given legal standing for the first time.
"This legislation makes clear in very blunt fashion that the thrust of policy in Israel is towards maintaining segregation in housing between Jewish and Arab citizens," she said.
The question of control over land, Ms Bishara said, was felt especially keenly by the Arab minority, because the state had nationalised 93 per cent of all territory inside its recognised borders.
Co-operative associations, which are limited to no more than 500 families each, have jurisdiction over most of the country's habitable land and were regarded by the authorities as a bulwark against an Arab takeover, she said. Arab citizens, meanwhile, are largely restricted to living in 124 towns and villages, and control 2.5 per cent of Israel's territory.
Planning and building laws confine the development and expansion of Arab communities, leading to overcrowding. Tens of thousands of Arab families, forced to build in non-zoned areas, live in homes under demolition orders.
Mr Kaadan, 54, a hospital nurse, said he had wanted to move to Katzir to improve his family's quality of life. Baqa al Gharbiyya, an Arab town 10km from Katzir where they previously lived, was densely populated and lacked public services, while the local schools for his five children were underfunded and crumbling.
Typically, Arab municipalities receive only one third of the budget of Jewish communities.
Mr Kaadan said he had applied to Katzir when he learnt that plots of land there for house-building were heavily subsidised by the state, selling for a fifth of the price demanded in Baqa al Gharbiyya.
The family's legal fight to win a place in Katzir has been arduous. It took five years for the Supreme Court to rule on the community's decision in 1995 to reject the Kaadans on the grounds that they were Arab.
Making "one of the most difficult decisions in my life", Aharon Barak, the court's president, ordered Katzir's admissions committee to consider the family's application, warning that it could not reject them because of their ethnicity.
Katzir, therefore, imposed a new criterion for admission - "social suitability" - that the Kaadans also failed. It was clear to everyone, Mr Kaadan said, that "suitability" referred to the fact that they were not Jews.
When the Kaadans appealed to the court again, the Lands Authority, a state body that manages territory in Israel, relented and sold the family a plot in 2007. However, the case has continued to reverberate. Other exclusive Jewish communities in the Galilee sought their own solution to barring the entry of Arab families after Ahmed and Fatina Zbeidat, from the Arab town of Sakhnin, applied to the co-operative association of Rakafet in the Misgav region.
Rakafet's admissions committee ruled in 2006 that the Zbeidats were unsuitable: Fatina was too "individualistic", while her husband lacked "knowledge of sophisticated interpersonal relations". Like the Kaadans, the Zbeidats have appealed to the Supreme Court.
Several Jewish communities near Rakafet hastily changed their bylaws last summer to include a loyalty oath. Typical was Manof's, which requires applicants to share "the values of the Zionist movement, Jewish heritage, settlement of the Land of Israel … and observance of Jewish holidays".
Ms Bishara, who represents the Zbeidats, said the couple was seeking a ruling against the use of admissions committees in the allocation of land and housing. The judges ordered the government to justify the practice at a hearing next month.
The new legislation, known as the Admissions Committee Bill, is designed to pre-empt any ruling by the court.
Gush Shalom, an Israeli peace group, said it would petition the Supreme Court to strike down the bill if, as expected, it becomes law in the next few weeks.
The liberal Haaretz newspaper called the bill an "outrageous" attempt to preserve "Jewish purity" in communities such as Katzir and Rakafet.
But the rightwing Jerusalem Post newspaper backed the legislation, saying Israeli Jews "should have the right to live in a community where they are not threatened by intermarriage or by becoming a cultural or religious minority".
jcook@thenational.ae
ABU DHABI ORDER OF PLAY
Starting at 10am:
Daria Kasatkina v Qiang Wang
Veronika Kudermetova v Annet Kontaveit (10)
Maria Sakkari (9) v Anastasia Potapova
Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova v Ons Jabeur (15)
Donna Vekic (16) v Bernarda Pera
Ekaterina Alexandrova v Zarina Diyas
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
MORE ON INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE
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Ruwais timeline
1971 Abu Dhabi National Oil Company established
1980 Ruwais Housing Complex built, located 10 kilometres away from industrial plants
1982 120,000 bpd capacity Ruwais refinery complex officially inaugurated by the founder of the UAE Sheikh Zayed
1984 Second phase of Ruwais Housing Complex built. Today the 7,000-unit complex houses some 24,000 people.
1985 The refinery is expanded with the commissioning of a 27,000 b/d hydro cracker complex
2009 Plans announced to build $1.2 billion fertilizer plant in Ruwais, producing urea
2010 Adnoc awards $10bn contracts for expansion of Ruwais refinery, to double capacity from 415,000 bpd
2014 Ruwais 261-outlet shopping mall opens
2014 Production starts at newly expanded Ruwais refinery, providing jet fuel and diesel and allowing the UAE to be self-sufficient for petrol supplies
2014 Etihad Rail begins transportation of sulphur from Shah and Habshan to Ruwais for export
2017 Aldar Academies to operate Adnoc’s schools including in Ruwais from September. Eight schools operate in total within the housing complex.
2018 Adnoc announces plans to invest $3.1 billion on upgrading its Ruwais refinery
2018 NMC Healthcare selected to manage operations of Ruwais Hospital
2018 Adnoc announces new downstream strategy at event in Abu Dhabi on May 13
Source: The National
Day 1 results:
Open Men (bonus points in brackets)
New Zealand 125 (1) beat UAE 111 (3)
India 111 (4) beat Singapore 75 (0)
South Africa 66 (2) beat Sri Lanka 57 (2)
Australia 126 (4) beat Malaysia -16 (0)
Open Women
New Zealand 64 (2) beat South Africa 57 (2)
England 69 (3) beat UAE 63 (1)
Australia 124 (4) beat UAE 23 (0)
New Zealand 74 (2) beat England 55 (2)
Key findings
- Over a period of seven years, a team of scientists analysed dietary data from 50,000 North American adults.
- Eating one or two meals a day was associated with a relative decrease in BMI, compared with three meals. Snacks count as a meal. Likewise, participants who ate more than three meals a day experienced an increase in BMI: the more meals a day, the greater the increase.
- People who ate breakfast experienced a relative decrease in their BMI compared with “breakfast-skippers”.
- Those who turned the eating day on its head to make breakfast the biggest meal of the day, did even better.
- But scrapping dinner altogether gave the best results. The study found that the BMI of subjects who had a long overnight fast (of 18 hours or more) decreased when compared even with those who had a medium overnight fast, of between 12 and 17 hours.
57%20Seconds
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A State of Passion
Directors: Carol Mansour and Muna Khalidi
Stars: Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah
Rating: 4/5
The specs
Engine: Four electric motors, one at each wheel
Power: 579hp
Torque: 859Nm
Transmission: Single-speed automatic
Price: From Dh825,900
On sale: Now
Specs
Engine: Electric motor generating 54.2kWh (Cooper SE and Aceman SE), 64.6kW (Countryman All4 SE)
Power: 218hp (Cooper and Aceman), 313hp (Countryman)
Torque: 330Nm (Cooper and Aceman), 494Nm (Countryman)
On sale: Now
Price: From Dh158,000 (Cooper), Dh168,000 (Aceman), Dh132,000 (Countryman)
2025 Fifa Club World Cup groups
Group A: Palmeiras, Porto, Al Ahly, Inter Miami.
Group B: Paris Saint-Germain, Atletico Madrid, Botafogo, Seattle.
Group C: Bayern Munich, Auckland City, Boca Juniors, Benfica.
Group D: Flamengo, ES Tunis, Chelsea, Leon.
Group E: River Plate, Urawa, Monterrey, Inter Milan.
Group F: Fluminense, Borussia Dortmund, Ulsan, Mamelodi Sundowns.
Group G: Manchester City, Wydad, Al Ain, Juventus.
Group H: Real Madrid, Al Hilal, Pachuca, Salzburg.
