Sustainable Tourism Law

PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE TOURISM – THE ISRAELI EXPERIENCE 811 This brings us to the legal aspects of the topic. It is obvious that any plan for tourism development needs the authority and force of a legal norm and effective tools for implementing its provisions, including supervision mechanisms and sanctions for violations. These should be backed by the courts of law, which are expected to understand the spirit of the relevant legislation and uphold its purposes in recognizing the importance of tourism development for the country’s economy and for the wellbeing of the public at large. We will see how the Israeli courts have lived up to these expectations. The basic law that regulates the planning of building in Israel is The Planning and Building Law of 1965, under which are three levels of main planning institutions that operate: The National Council for Planning and Building, the District Commissions, and the Local Commissions which prepare the detailed plans for their cities or rural settlements and they generally are the organ that issues building permits for each project and each structure. The tourism interests of the country are represented in the National and the District Commissions by a member appointed to them by the Minister of Tourism. As mentioned, two country-wide schemes relevant to our discussion were prepared by the National Council – one for the Coastal Beaches named TMA 13, which was approved in 1990, and the other for Tourism and Vacation Areas and Tourism Projects (which was updated in 2003). These schemes prescribe guidelines for the use of various areas of the country for the purposes of vacationing, tourism and recreation. One significant guideline of TMA 13 has been that no construction could be allowed within 100 meters of the water line. This has later been extended to a strip of 300 meters, where only in very exceptional cases building will be permitted and only after being examined by a special planning commission. The Law also prescribed a variety of sanctions against violations, from stopping and demolishing constructions to stopping of electricity supply to illegal buildings. It so happened that a number of local plans have already been made and even implemented prior to the preparation of the National Plans, and the N.P.T. did have to recognize their validity even if they deviated from the N.P.T. because of rights already acquired by entrepreneurs who relied on them. Such Plans also usually specified the types of projects allowed within tourism zones: The terms usually used were – “hotels, apartment hotels, vacation houses”.