The Efrat Development Company during recent weeks has purchased solar panels to be installed on the roofs of residents of homes in Yehuda and Shomron to permit them to benefit from the abundance of sunlight towards generating electricity.
The company’s director, Edmond Chassin turned to a number of banks for loans to fund the project. One bank refused to even give a bid, the Bank of Jerusalem, unwilling to operate over the Green Line. The bank simply refused to provide any information Chassin reports.
Chassin is calling upon appropriate government regulatory agencies to take appropriate action against the bank for its discriminatory policy.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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4 Responses
Why should they lend money when they have no confidence that the government won’t give the land away and the borrowers will be bankrupted and unable to pay? If the government wants the bank to make these loans, all it has to do is guarantee that the borrowers will keep their homes.
The bank is operating on the presumption that there is some risk that some West Bank residences might be deemed to have been constructed “illegaly” under current or future laws in EY, or that there could be sucessful litigation to recover the property to its “rightful owners” and thus don’t want to take the risk. However, if these homes already have mortgage loans, then obviously some lender was satisfied as to the legitimacy of the title. It would make sense to simply do a second trust or some form of home equity loans to finance these solar panels. It is entirely understandable why a small bank doesn’t want to deal with the title risk hassles for small loans in the West Bank
Try a different banks, does this apply to Ramat SHlomo, Beitar, Efrat, French Hill also?
Given the government’s past policy of confiscting property for political reasons, as demonstrated in Gush Katif, I would hate to be a shareholder of a bank that was making loans to people in the West Bank (or for that matter, East Jerusalem as defined in 1949-1967). There are only a handful of parties committed to keeping the West Bank, and they aren’t anywhere’s near a majority.