Afik HanahalVatmal (National Committee for Preferred Housing Sites)
In short
The Vatmal is the state's "fast lane" for large housing plans. When a site is declared preferred for housing, the plan bypasses the district committee and is approved by the national committee on a relatively short timeline.
The professional explanation
The committee operates under the Law for Promoting Construction in Preferred Housing Sites (temporary order), 2014, extended several times. Threshold: a site with a large number of housing units, in most cases on land mostly state-owned.
Vatmal plans also include private land within the site; its owners take part in a reparcelation plan and receive plots according to an appraiser's allocation and balancing table.
The Vatmal's statutory timeline is short (months rather than years to approval), but implementation - infrastructure, marketing and permits - takes years.
Example from the field
Vatmal plans in the Sharon (for instance in the Hod Hasharon-Kfar Saba area) rezoned agricultural land into neighbourhoods of thousands of units. Private parcel owners included in the site received building plots in the allocation table.