Someone is living in my Israeli apartment without permission. How do I get them out from abroad?

It is usually not a stranger. A cousin who was given the keys to check on the place, a former tenant's partner who never left, a caretaker who moved a family in. The owner in Melbourne or Manchester finds out months later, from a neighbour or an unpaid vaad bayit bill, and by then the single fastest remedy Israeli law offers has already expired.

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Detailed Answer

The Land Law 1969 (Hok HaMekarkein) separates ownership from possession and gives each its own protection. Section 16 is the owner's route: a person entitled to possession of land may demand delivery of possession from anyone holding it without a right, and that demand becomes a possession claim (siluk yad) in the Magistrate Court. Section 18 is the shortcut. Section 18(a) permits reasonable force to prevent an unlawful entry as it happens, and Section 18(b) permits the possessor to remove a trespasser who entered unlawfully, but only within 30 days of the trespass. After 30 days the shortcut is closed, and Section 19 supplies the sting: where possession was taken back outside the conditions of Section 18, the court may order the property restored to the person removed, even though the property plainly belongs to the person who removed them. Changing the locks on a relative who has been in the flat since spring is therefore not a robust plan. It converts a case you would win into a case in which you are the defendant.

The other variable is what the occupier says about how they got in. A pure trespasser who cannot point to any permission is straightforward. Someone who says the owner's brother let them stay, or that they paid rent in cash, is asserting a licence or a tenancy, and the file stops being a trespass case and becomes an eviction, with a different evidential burden and different procedural track. Our guide on evicting tenants from Israeli property as a non-resident landlord covers that route. Alongside possession, an owner claims reasonable use fees (dmei shimush re'uyim) for the period of occupation, measured by the market rent the apartment would have produced, which is what makes the litigation economically worthwhile rather than merely satisfying.

In Practice: Section 16 of the Land Law 1969 gives the owner a possession claim, but the direct self-help remedy in Section 18(b) lasts only 30 days from the trespass, after which Section 19 allows the Magistrate Court to order a forcibly removed occupier to be reinstated. On a two-bedroom Tel Aviv apartment, reasonable use fees run at roughly NIS 7,000 per month of unauthorised occupation, recoverable alongside possession, and a contested possession claim in the Magistrate Court typically takes eight to eighteen months from filing to judgment before enforcement through the Execution Office (Hotzaa LaPoal) even begins.

Distance costs you in three ways, and they are worth naming. You lose the 30-day window because you are not there to notice the entry. You lose evidence, because nobody photographs an empty flat and the occupier is free to build a story about permission that you can only contradict from memory. And you lose time, because the claim needs an Israeli lawyer acting under a notarised and apostilled power of attorney, a current Land Registry extract (nesach tabu) proving your title, and an affidavit from you, sworn before an Israeli consul or a local notary with apostille, before anything can be filed. Practical protection is cheaper than any of this: a named local agent who physically enters the property on a schedule, utility and arnona accounts in your own name so consumption at an empty flat is visible to you, and a written, dated licence for anyone you do allow to use the place, so that permission ends on a date rather than dissolving into a dispute about what was agreed years ago.

When to Consult a Lawyer

• The occupier claims they were given permission by a family member. That single assertion changes the legal route, and the response has to be built from documents and correspondence before it hardens into an accepted version of events.
• You are considering changing the locks or cutting the utilities. Outside the Section 18(b) window this exposes you to a Section 19 restoration order and to a damages claim, and it is the most common way non-resident owners lose a case they were winning.
• The occupation has run for a long period, or the occupier has registered an address there. Long uninterrupted possession invites claims that are far harder to defeat, and delay is the one factor that consistently works against the owner.

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Speak With an Israeli Attorney

Possession cases are won on the sequence of steps, not on the strength of the deed, and the wrong first move can cost an owner the case entirely. We file the possession claim, seek interim relief where the property is at risk, and pursue reasonable use fees for the whole period of occupation, all under a power of attorney signed where you live.

Contact us for a confidential initial consultation.