Let’s start with the numbers: Issuing building permits in Israel takes up to three times longer than the average in most Western countries. In the second half of 2019, the average duration for obtaining building permits in Israel was 319 days: 407 days in the relief track, 276 days in the whole track, and 144 days in the fast track. In contrast, according to the World Bank index, in Western countries that have implemented online systems for submitting permit applications, the average duration is only 114 days.
This staggering statistic was revealed in a 2021 State Comptroller’s report, which found that Amendment 101 failed to shorten the time required to obtain building permits—it sometimes even extended it. This issue arguably has the most significant impact on the skyrocketing prices you pay for housing and the nerve-wracking wait until your dream home is finally built. To analyze this issue in depth, we will delve into it further in the upcoming sections of this unique investigation.
The construction sector is a key economic industry influencing the country’s physical development and economic growth engines. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, the construction sector in Israel produces at least 15 million square meters of new buildings annually. It completes around 12 million square meters of buildings for various uses. The total investment in the sector exceeds 150 billion shekels, with housing construction alone accounting for approximately 90 billion shekels (about 60% of total investment). According to the Bank of Israel, about 300,000 workers were employed in the construction industry before the war—two-thirds of them local workers, with the remainder consisting of Palestinian laborers from the West Bank and foreign workers. Following the October 7th massacre and the ensuing war, the number of workers from Palestinian territories significantly decreased, and the government is now seeking solutions by reaching out to foreign countries to fill the labor gap.
Physical and spatial planning in Israel is regulated through master plans and detailed plans, ensuring that land use meets the population’s diverse needs while balancing various public interests. As we explored in previous sections, the Planning Administration operates as an independent unit under the Ministry of the Interior and serves as the national headquarters for spatial planning. The administration includes a senior regulatory division that oversees several departments responsible for supervising the 131 local planning and building committees and handling national-level aspects of construction licensing regulation. As the regulatory authority, the Planning Administration guides local committees professionally and provides them with the necessary tools for improvement. Additionally, it conducts ongoing oversight of the committees’ performance.
Dispersed Authorities and Lack of Coordination
According to the Planning and Building Law of 1965, construction work requires a permit. Building permits ensure that construction complies with master plans and other legal regulations regarding building characteristics and safety. The licensing process directly affects the construction industry, which has significant economic implications. This underscores the importance of streamlining procedures and ensuring the quality of oversight.
For the past two decades, the public has been concerned about improving the licensing process and guaranteeing construction quality. In December 2003, the State Commission of Inquiry into Building Safety (“Zeiler Report”) was published. The committee was established following the collapse of the Versailles wedding hall floor in Jerusalem in 2001, a disaster that claimed 23 lives and injured 380 people. The final report highlighted severe operational failures and structural issues in the permitting process and the operations of local planning committees.
According to the Zeiler Commission, one of the primary weaknesses in Israel’s construction licensing process is the excessive concentration of authority in the hands of local municipalities without sufficient checks and balances. Local authorities are responsible for granting permits, supervising construction compliance, and even taking legal action when necessary.
“Concentrating all ‘construction authorities’ within a single entity, without separating their functions or implementing a system of checks and balances, is a recipe for many of the issues we have identified,” the report stated. “This situation allows elected officials to grant ‘favors’ to voters, financial powerhouses, and other interest groups, leading to numerous other dysfunctions in municipal operations. Some believe this lack of separation is the root of all problems.”
Additionally, the report found that during the licensing review process, municipal authorities do not assess the quality or safety of buildings but instead focus on technical aspects, such as building volume and compliance with zoning lines. Furthermore, the primary oversight conducted by local committees is passive, relying primarily on reports from various parties involved in the construction process rather than requiring on-site inspections.
A key recommendation of the commission was the establishment of private, professional inspection centers to oversee building planning and construction execution. These centers would play a significant role in the licensing process, both in the approval phase and during construction.
Another major weakness in Israel’s construction permitting and regulation system, highlighted extensively in the Zeiler Report, is the lack of clarity and coherence in the division of authority among the various regulatory bodies and the legal framework governing the sector. This fragmented reality makes it difficult for applicants to navigate the system, resulting in a convoluted and inefficient process. While the Ministry of the Interior is commonly seen as the central authority in this field, it does not hold all the necessary powers for the licensing and construction process, scattered among various government ministries.
In addition to the Licensing Authority and local committees, at least 15 other entities are involved in the permitting process. These entities provide information and grant approvals or require coordination and expert opinions before construction can proceed.
The dispersion of authority has led to a lack of coordination in establishing various regulatory norms, resulting in contradictions and redundancies among different directives over the years. The Zeiler Commission found that the norms in this field are unclear, inaccessible, and not “user-friendly,” making it challenging to locate the various regulations and determine which ones are mandatory. Additionally, the commission found that building regulations, construction standards, and guidelines span approximately 10,000 pages and contain about 500 contradictions, omissions, and redundancies.
In response, the commission recommended new legislation for construction, consolidating all building norms into a single, systematically organized code known as the “Construction Code.” Since the report’s publication and its recommendations, several government decisions have attempted to address the highlighted issues. As discussed in previous sections, the first significant attempt at comprehensive reform occurred in 2014, when the Knesset passed a sweeping amendment to the Planning and Building Law, known as “Amendment 101.” This amendment aimed to introduce a broad reform to streamline and improve the licensing process and oversight of construction execution.
As part of this amendment and the licensing regulations enacted thereafter, a set of norms was established to synchronize the entities involved in the process, provide preliminary information required for permits, define different licensing tracks, and set deadlines for specific phases.
For example, the amendment mandated obtaining preliminary information required for a permit, defined various licensing tracks with deadlines for different stages, and established oversight institutes to centralize content inspections. Additionally, the licensing process was set to be entirely digitized, leading to the creation of the Rishuy Zamin online licensing system.
In August 2017, the Minister of Finance appointed a committee to examine the construction licensing process. A year later, the committee published its recommendations. These recommendations focused on improving the implementation of the licensing reform, training and adapting local committee staff to fulfill their roles, and streamlining the licensing process.
As a result of the licensing reform, Israel climbed six places in the World Bank’s construction permit index but still ranks far behind most developed nations, at 35th place. A 2023 report by Nashon Roth, a researcher at the Kohelet Policy Forum, stated that “despite efforts to improve the process, gaps remain between the legal provisions establishing the reform and the reality on the ground, as well as between the recommendations and the policies implemented.”
A glaring example of this gap is the issue of oversight institutes. Amendment 101 stipulated that the regulations concerning these oversight institutes, intended to establish a robust monitoring system for licensing and construction quality, would take effect in January 2016. The Minister of the Interior was given the authority to postpone their implementation by up to two years or gradually phase them in. However, more than 13 years after the amendment was passed, the government’s decision has not been fully implemented.
The implementation of these regulations has been repeatedly delayed, and the transition from pilot programs in a limited number of local authorities to nationwide operation remains stalled. The State Comptroller found that contrary to their intended role, the oversight institutes do not serve as centralized entities managing all aspects of regulatory oversight but instead handle only 2% of the few cases they were initially allowed to oversee. This issue will be explored further in the next section.
Quantity Over Quality and Efficiency
A review conducted by the State Comptroller regarding the implementation of Amendment 101, specifically in improving and streamlining the licensing process, revealed significant failures and discrepancies between expectations and reality. Among the most critical issues highlighted in the report were the lack of administrative infrastructure to support process optimization, delays in finalizing two-thirds of the Construction Code, shortcomings in training and professional development, misalignment between the “Rishuy Zamin” system and the needs of a functional digital licensing system, and excessive processing times for obtaining preliminary information and building permits. The following sections will explore various characteristics of Israel’s licensing system that contribute to its inefficiency.
Local committees handle applications for preliminary information and building permits, necessitating two key types of personnel: information officers and permit examiners (who also serve as permit reviewers). Standardization guidelines recommended allowing flexibility between these roles and merging their job classifications for better management. Additionally, each committee was broadly recommended to have at least two employees performing both roles to ensure operational continuity.
The results, as expected, are dismal. Data show that local committees (for which figures were available) lack 36 information officers while having a surplus of approximately 150 permit examiners. Among the 131 committees, nearly two-thirds suffer from a shortage of information officers (with the worst shortages in the Central, Northern, and Southern regional committees). At the same time, a similar proportion have an excess of permit examiners. In 30 local committees, both roles are understaffed.
The imbalance in staffing levels likely stems from a near-total disconnect between the number of employees and actual outcomes. “Analysis indicates that an excess or shortage of permit examiners has no real correlation with the time required to issue a permit,” the Comptroller wrote, “and a positive correlation was found between a surplus of staff and longer permit approval times… In other words, the more examiners there are beyond the required standard, the longer the permitting process takes.” This means that rather than streamlining operations, the excess personnel are irrelevant to the process’s success and, in some cases, even hinder it. Put bluntly, unnecessary employees create artificial obstacles to justify their salaries.
The Planning Administration did not dispute the data and admitted to the Comptroller that it agrees with the conclusion that “there is no necessary connection between the number of employees and the effectiveness of the licensing department.” If so, why does the Planning Administration continue paying employees who do not contribute to achieving its goals—perhaps even obstructing them?
Employee inefficiency is partly due to their limited skills and educational backgrounds. For example, the reviewed local committees had not developed training or professional development programs for permit examiners and information officers. Among the 43 employees (information officers and permit examiners) working in five committees that reported on employee training, only half (22) attended a relevant course—often more than two years after starting employment. Others had never participated in such training despite working in the committees for over two years.
According to the Planning Administration’s data, in 102 committees for which information was available, the vast majority of information officers and permit examiners hold only technical engineering diplomas. Only 30% of information officers and 19% of permit examiners hold academic degrees, and just half of those degrees are in architecture or engineering. In other words, only about 10% of permit examiners and 16% of information officers have an educational background relevant to their positions.
The Planning Administration asserts that the training provided to licensing employees through building and architectural technical diplomas meets the role’s needs. However, field professionals disagree. “In meetings held by the State Comptroller’s Office with representatives of engineers, architects, and contractors, concerns were raised that a lack of professionalism and knowledge gaps often lead to unnecessary misunderstandings and inefficiencies in the licensing process,” the Comptroller’s report states.
Additionally, recruiting qualified personnel has proven challenging, affecting the committees’ operational capacity. Significant disparities in the quality of training provided to licensing staff further exacerbate inefficiencies.
An association of independent architects, The Fifth Front, highlights a fundamental flaw in the system: information officers and permit examiners inherently lack the knowledge and experience of architects and active planning teams. According to their perspective, the primary failure lies in defining these roles—requiring the licensing authority to examine permit applications for compliance with all legislation without distinguishing between spatial planning aspects and technical design elements. There is also no proper division of responsibility between the committee and the applicant. As a result, inspections do not differentiate between critical and minor issues, leading to excessive scrutiny of trivial details and wasting valuable resources.
The Association of Contractors and Builders in Israel concurs that local committee employees’ lack of experience and relevant education directly harms service quality and procedural efficiency. This inefficiency delays the licensing process and wastes resources for applicants and the committee itself, mainly because it requires handling resubmitted applications. The association believes that one potential solution is to advance the reform by introducing self-licensing.
Meanwhile, the Organization of Independent Engineers and Architects in Israel suggests that efforts should simplify the licensing process and enhance committee employees’ professionalism—partly by offering financial incentives. This could be achieved by reducing the number of regulations that require review and shifting more responsibility onto developers.
Who Is This Advertising For?
The issue of excessive staffing does not stop at the inefficiencies in issuing building permits. It also fails to provide the public with accessible and reliable information about planning and construction in their residential areas.
First, most committees do not conduct broad, strategic discussions regarding the state of construction licensing. As a result, they cannot engage in strategic planning, identify bottlenecks, remove bureaucratic barriers, or explore ways to improve public service.
Second, most committees suffer from a severe lack of accessibility and availability across almost all communication channels with the public—including telephone support and online information. Despite this, outdated and nearly obsolete methods such as newspaper advertisements continue to be used, at an exorbitant cost—15 million shekels per year. According to the State Comptroller, these expenses are unjustified: “The format of newspaper advertisements and notices, as well as the format of public notices, raises serious doubts about the effectiveness of such publication.” Furthermore, the Planning Administration has never evaluated the efficiency of newspaper advertising. “The impact of these publications remains unknown, and there is no data on how many objections were submitted due to the notices published in newspapers,” the report explains.
Despite failing to assess its effectiveness, the Planning Administration issued a baseless statement claiming that “print journalism has not disappeared, and advertising in this manner can increase public exposure and engagement; therefore, it should be preserved.” The foundation of this assertion is unclear and, at the very least, out of touch with contemporary reality. What is known, however, is that the publishers of Israel’s major newspapers—Yedioth Ahronoth, Haaretz, and Israel Hayom—are fighting tooth and nail to ensure that government notices continue to be published in print media.
In other words, newspaper ads represent a covert financial pipeline from the government to private media outlets, forcing the public to funnel millions of shekels into the already well-lined pockets of Noni Mozes, Amos Schocken, and Miriam Adelson for a service that citizens do not use.
As is well known, media organizations wield extraordinary power compared to other industries because they can influence elected officials and public servants through positive or negative coverage. Anyone daring to disrupt this lucrative arrangement risks becoming the target of scathing media criticism—of course, under the guise of so-called “courageous journalism” that is supposedly free from commercial interests.
Thus, the Planning Administration’s clear incentive is to maintain this distorted status quo rather than risk negative coverage. This is likely why it continues to support print advertising. In this case, the public interest is a much lower priority.
Coming Up Next: A Deep Dive into Israel’s Licensing Procedures and an International Comparison with Developed Nations.
