{"id":9560,"date":"2015-12-06T11:02:33","date_gmt":"2015-12-06T09:02:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/law.acri.org.il\/en\/?p=9560"},"modified":"2015-12-06T11:02:33","modified_gmt":"2015-12-06T09:02:33","slug":"acri-petition-to-court-compel-israel-land-authority-to-penalize-beemunah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.acri.org.il\/en\/2015\/12\/06\/acri-petition-to-court-compel-israel-land-authority-to-penalize-beemunah\/","title":{"rendered":"ACRI Petition to Court: Compel Israel Land Authority to penalize Be\u2019Emunah"},"content":{"rendered":"

On 3 December 2015 ACRI submitted a petition<\/a> to the Administrative Court in Jerusalem, calling to compel the Israel Land Authority to penalize the \u201cBe\u2019Emunah\u201d company due to its discriminatory marketing of residential units in Carmei Gat.\u00a0 The potential penalties set in the tender are a fine amounting to 15 percent of income, and\/or annulling the company\u2019s winning bid.\u00a0 Following our petition, Justice Nava Ben-Or ruled that the State Attorney must respond and notify the court by December 10th<\/sup> whether it has decided to rescind \u201cBe\u2019Emunah\u2019s\u201d winning bid.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

ACRI\u2019s petition was submitted after \u201cBe\u2019Emunah\u201d declared that it was marketing the apartments solely to the national-religious public.\u00a0 This constitutes discrimination against secular, Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) and non-Jewish individuals.\u00a0 On top of that, a few days ago the company distributed an offensive advertisement, mocking Mizrahi Israelis and stating that in its housing development, there wouldn\u2019t be \u201cneighbors of that sort.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The petition states that the tender that \u201cBe\u2019Emunah\u201d won was for construction of residential apartment buildings on public lands, for all citizens without discrimination.\u00a0 The State did not designate the project for the national-religious population alone.\u00a0 Thus, by marketing the units only to that segment of the population, \u201cBe\u2019Emunah\u201d is violating the conditions of the tender.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

ACRI maintains, in the petition, that the Israel Land Authority (ILA) is obligated to ensure that public lands are equally accessible to all citizens, and the tender conditions indeed reflected that obligation.\u00a0 As \u201cBe\u2019Emunah\u201d marketed the apartments in a discriminatory manner, the ILA must penalize it.\u00a0 In fact, ACRI had foreseen Be\u2019Emunah\u2019s discriminatory marketing and had already warned<\/a> the ILA about it several months ago, but the ILA had opted at the time to ignore the issue so as not to delay the Carmei Gat tender.\u00a0 The ILA must act now to oppose illegal discrimination.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

While in the past the State indeed allocated public lands for construction of separate Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) communities, those were an exception to the obligation of equality in allocation of public lands, as they involved a group that requires separate residences so as to preserve its culture.\u00a0 Secular and national-religious Israelis are not entitled to that in any case, and in Carmei Gat there was no State decision to designate the land for a national-religious housing development. If \u201cBe\u2019Emunah\u201d had sought to create a homogenous community, it could have appealed the tender conditions in advance.\u00a0 But now it is trying to create facts on the ground in violation of the tender.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cSegregation and homogeneity in housing are common in the rural sector, and we have recently witnessed a rising trend in cities, that are typically heterogeneous.\u00a0 This is a worrisome phenomenon.\u00a0 Just as ACRI opposed secular-only communities and kibbutzim which screen applicants via acceptance committees, we likewise oppose attempts to create communities that exclude anyone who is not national-religious.\u00a0 Each person has a right to choose his place of residence, yet the State may not legitimize segregation imposed by strong groups that wish to reside only with those who resemble them, while excluding other citizens from lands that are meant for all.\u00a0 We therefore expect the State to act decisively against discriminatory marketing of apartments built on State lands.\u201d said Attorney Gil Gan-Mor, Director of the Social and Economic Rights Unit at The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, who submitted the petition.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 3 December 2015 ACRI submitted a petition to the Administrative Court in Jerusalem, calling to compel the Israel Land … Read more…<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9562,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,33,26],"tags":[213,155,84],"class_list":["post-9560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-housing-rights","category-racism-and-discrimination","category-social-and-economic-rights","tag-discrimination","tag-housing","tag-legal-work"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.acri.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.acri.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.acri.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.acri.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.acri.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9560"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/law.acri.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9563,"href":"https:\/\/law.acri.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9560\/revisions\/9563"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.acri.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.acri.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.acri.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.acri.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}