Israeli Supreme Court: Local Elections must be Held in Abu Basmah Regional Council in the Naqab

(Haifa, Israel) Following a petition filed by Adalah and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), on 9 February 2011 the Supreme Court of Israel ruled that the first local elections must be held in the Abu Basmah Regional Council in the Negev (Naqab) on 4 December 2012, and that they should not be postponed for any reason. The court ordered the Interior Ministry and the government-appointed head of the council to make all necessary preparations for the elections.

During the Supreme Court hearing held on 9 February 2011, Chief Justice Dorit Beinisch stated that the time between the establishment of the Regional Council in 2003 and the appointed date for holding the elections in 2012 is very long, and that the time had come to hold the elections.

In April 2010, Adalah Attorney Ala Mahajneh and ACRI Attorney Gil Gan-Mor submitted a petition to the Supreme Court demanding the cancellation of an amendment to The Regional Councils' Law (Date for General Elections) – 2009. This law allows the Interior Minister to indefinitely postpone the first elections in the Arab Bedouin regional council. The petitioners asked the court to order the Interior Minister to announce the holding of elections as soon as possible. Although the council was established over six years ago, it is still headed by an official from the Shas political party appointed by the Interior Minister.

The petitioners, who also include residents of the Abu Basmah Regional Council, public figures, the National Committee of Arab Mayors, the Negev Co-Existence Forum for Civic Equality, the Ma'an Forum, the Forum for Arab Education in the Negev, and the Center for Jewish Pluralism, argued that the law violates the basic tenets of the democratic system, which obligates the holding of free and fair elections on dates that are fixed and known in advance.  The petitioners also argued that despite the law's general wording about “new regional councils,” its actual and sole objective is to prevent free elections from being held to the Abu Basmah Regional Council.

The Abu Basmah Regional Council was established in 2003 after a long struggle by Arab Bedouin residents in the Naqab for the recognition of their villages. Ten villages, with a total population of approximately 30,000 people, live within the jurisdiction of the regional council. The regional council also provides education, social welfare and environmental services for some 40,000 additional people who live in neighboring unrecognized Arab Bedouin villages.

Adalah Attorney Sawsan Zaher, who represented the petitioners before the Supreme Court stated that: "The enactment of a special law to prevent Arab residents of the Abu Basmah Regional Council from electing the members of their local authority is a very radical step taken by the Knesset. It does not do so in the case of Jewish local councils. We see the Supreme Court's decision as a positive step to enable the citizens to exercise their rights."

Attorney Gil Gan-Mor of ACRI stated that: “In a democratic country, it should not be possible to enact a law which gives a government minister absolute power to postpone the holding of elections indefinitely. We thought this issue would be implicitly understood and taken for granted, but we were mistaken."