Description:Throughout most of the country's history, Israel's Supreme Court has failed to set limits on the powers of land expropriation and to provide protection to private property. This book studies the Israeli case law of land expropriation against the social characteristics, political realities and ideologies of Israel. Taking a new approach to the interpretation of Israeli jurisprudence and uncovering the cultural and social underpinnings of the judicial treatment of property rights, the book examines how the Court's tendency to withhold protection to landowners rests on, and in turn is shaped by, the social consensus in Israeli society as to the meaning of private property and the right of the government to take it.