Sustainable Tourism Law

810 SUSTAINABLE TOURISM LAW for recreation, securing sufficient and diverse accommodation facilities, shaping the appearance and landscapes of the country, tending to and enhancing sites and touristic roadways, and taking responsibility for preserving the nature qualities as well as the country’s heritage resources. Even before the N.P.T. was prepared, another Master Plan for the seashores – a major asset for recreational tourism – had already been approved. Also, the status of other important attractions for visitors such as nature reserves, national parks and sites of historical, archaeological and religious significance, had been dealt with by other legislation and other Plans. On top of all that, plans of a lesser hierarchical status than the National Plans, namely District and Local Plans, have already been prepared and implemented, and they had been relied upon by builders and developers of various areas even before those National Plans came into being. In many cases, tourism development plans had to compete with demands by different bodies and developers for the use of the same pieces of land for other purposes. The competition is even more severe in Israel: in this small country the protected open nature spaces, where no construction takes place, occupy a larger percentage of the country’s area than in any other country on the Mediterranean, according to the IUCN, the World Conservation Union. A major example for conflicting uses is the sea shore, which is in high demand for power stations, water desalination plants, military installations, and of course for luxury private dwellings that enjoy a sea-view. A look at the Israeli coastal region on the Mediterranean can show the areas that serve such different purposes, which means that tourism regions need sometimes to be squeezed in between and be protected from harmful effects of adjoining areas in order to be maintained for sustainable tourism. The N.P.T. had therefore to consider those realities and to manoeuvre between them as best as they could. And also – and this will be the main topic of this review– they had to cope with recurring attempts by entrepreneurs to act against the tourism development goals of the State. I will therefore mainly address the “tourism development” issue in regard to allocating areas dedicated to the creation of the infrastructure needed to serve tourists and vacationers, namely, accommodation facilities together with ancillary services for leisure and recreation. Since such areas usually are choice locations – the sea-front and outstanding landscape areas – they attracted developers who tried ingenious ways to evade and circumvent the directives of the above Plans in order to construct, for instance, profitable luxury apartments.