On 22 February 2009, the Supreme Court of Israel confirmed an agreement reached between Attorney Adel Badeer of Adalah and the Municipality of Akka (Acre) for the cancellation of an amendment to municipal regulations introduced by the Akka Municipality in October 2002. The regulations prohibited business owners in mixed neighborhoods with a Jewish majority in Akka from opening their shops on Saturdays, the Jewish Sabbath.
Under the agreement reached, the municipality will establish a special committee that will divide up the town into areas according to the composition of each area, and on that basis, it will determine whether or not Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel are permitted to open their shops on Saturdays or not. The committee will present its findings to Adalah and a group of Arab business owners who joined the case as petitioners for their endorsement before they are approved by the municipality. The agreement stipulates that in case of a disagreement between the municipality and the petitioners regarding the demarcation of certain areas, the parties will revert to the Attorney General to resolve the dispute. The municipality also committed not to issue fines to business owners who work on Saturdays in Arab neighborhoods and neighborhoods with a “large Arab minority.”
Adalah filed the petition to the Supreme Court in May 2007, on behalf of eight owners of businesses that are located in mixed neighborhoods in Akka to demand that the court cancel the regulations. Akka is a mixed Arab-Jewish town in the north of Israel, which witnessed terrible violence between Jewish and Arab residents of the town in October 2008. Approximately 12,000 Arab citizens of Israel live in Akka, who make up around 27% of the town’s population.
Adalah argued in the petition that the majority of the customers on Saturdays are Arabs, as well as some secular Jewish Israelis who shop on this day. The petitioners have continued to open their shops on Saturdays despite the change in the municipality’s regulations five years ago, and did not receive any warnings or face any criminal charges. In January 2007, however, indictments were filed against the petitioners for opening their businesses on Saturdays, and thereby contravening the municipal regulations.
In the petition, Adalah argued that, “The primary legislator (the Knesset) has enacted laws to govern the weekly days of rest and closures of businesses on Saturdays. Israeli law stipulates an obligation that the days of rest for each religious group should be determined separately.” The petitioners stressed that the amendment is unconstitutional, breaches the principle of equality, and violates the constitutional rights of Arab citizens, including the rights to freedom of employment, freedom of religion and conscience, and freedom from religion: “These regulations force Arabs living in Akka to close their places of trade on Saturday, which is not a day of rest for them, and is not a day which they can take advantage of socially.”