The Tel Aviv District Court on Sunday canceled a tender for apartments at discounted prices in Jaffa for Arabs only that were offered as part of the government’s socialized housing program Mehir La’Mishtaken (special price for dwellers), Israel Hayom reported Sunday. The court sharply criticized the state for hiding the fact that the apartments are marketed to Arabs only, to avoid lawsuits.
Judge Kobi Vardi complained that the state had not disclosed to the court the identity of the person who decided to hide the Arabs-only component of the Jaffa plan, and determined that the state had presented him with incorrect facts. The judge also criticized Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara who defied a court order to take a position on the legal question of the state allocating apartments to Arabs only.
When the tender for the Mehir La’Mishtaken houses on the grounds of the former Maccabi Jaffa Stadium compound was originally made public, the state announced that 30 units would be allocated to “the local residents of Jaffa.” Later on, the Tel Aviv municipality decided that these would go only to local Arabs, without telling anyone.
But Israel is a very small country, and so, eventually, the illegal plan was discovered by chance by attorneys Itamar and Elhanan Miron, who petitioned against the plan on behalf of the Jewish residents of Jaffa.
Judge Vardi further noted that when he asked representatives of the state during the hearing about the concealment of the Arabs-only plan, “no real explanation or answer was given,” and when he wondered who even decided to allocate apartments to Arabs only, “They gave evasive responses which provided no answer to these basic questions.”
“It’s hard to believe that the state makes decisions in such a hush-hush manner,” the judge said, adding, “these things are puzzling to me.”
In his criticism of AG Baharav-Miara for not addressing the fundamental issue of allocating apartments to Arabs only, despite the court order, the judge wrote that he would have expected her to address, “even in one word,” the substance of the matter itself.
“There is no dispute as to the horizontal implications of such a decision,” the judge wrote, “of the preference of this or that minority over another in a heterogeneous area. This is a matter of principle and substance and it is even explosive and can provoke constitutional problems, and is in a legal dispute.”
Judge Vardi criticized the fact that despite the petitioners’ inquiries regarding the legality of the tender, the AG responded that the matter was under investigation and that no lotteries were being held, but in practice, the state ignored his “background noises” and held the tender, and then argued that since the lottery had already taken place the wheel could not be turned back.
In some countries, this would be considered corruption. In 2015, the Jews of Afula fought in court against the sale of land to Arabs and won – after it had been discovered that the purchase was coordinated and systematic. In the Afula case, the corruption was on the part of real estate interests; in Jaffa, the rot belongs in the state and municipality, with what allegedly was the protection of the newly-appointed AG.
