Extension of Lease(Islamic Fiqh and the Jordanian Landlords and Tenants Ordinance: A Comparative Study

This study tackles the issue of the legal extension of lease in Palestine, to shed light upon the idea of the legal extension of lease that stirred a controversy at the judicial level among law enforcement officials in all the countries that ratified it. I highlighted in the introduction that this idea emerged from an urgent social need, which is overpopulation. We all agree that by implementing this idea we deviate from the general principles, specifically the pacta sunt servanda principle, or what is known as freedom of contractor; where the legislator imposes his will first, and the will of the two parties of the lease second, and extends the lease to the leasee for an unlimited period of time based on the law, accordingly the legal extension of the lease is an exception that was put into place to tackle and solve an exceptional social issue under extraordinary circumstances and timing. The aforementioned could be acceptable during that time, yet continuing with its implementation can cause problems, since it breaches the principle of contractual equality. These problems surfaced in many countries that applied this idea. Accordingly, the legislator in many of these countries including Jordan commenced with implementing legal expressions and tools to amend or revoke this idea in order to alleviate these problems that cumulated as a result and to gradually put an end them. What motivated me to conduct this study is the step taken by the Jordanian legislator in drafting and issuing The amended Landlords and Tenants Ordinance number (30)/2003, which was from my perspective a bold step; to abandon the idea of the legal extension of the lease, since it brought back the balance to the relationship between the leasee and the lessor (the two parties of the contract). This is a positive outcome since the extraordinary circumstances are no longer applicable and the continuation of the enforcement of the legal extension of the lease without justification constitutes an obstacle to the economic and the housing development.