ADALAH'S NEWSLETTER
Volume 54, November 2008

Supreme Court Gives State until May 2009 to Cancel “National Priority Areas”
Adalah: The Court Has Given the State another Year in which to Discriminate against Arab Citizens of Israel

Adalah: “We view the decision as extremely dangerous that, although the state has recklessly breached the rule of law and despite the fact that almost three years have passed since the court’s decision was delivered and ten years since the petition was filed, the Supreme Court has granted the state an addition year to implement its decision. In doing so the court has granted the state an addition year in which to continue to discriminate against Arab citizens of Israel in budgets for education.”

On 23 November 2008, the Supreme Court of Israel issued a decision to allow the state an addition year, until May 2009, in which to implement its ruling of 27 February 2006 concerning the "National Priority Areas" (NPAs). In its 2006 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the government’s division of the country into NPAs that are awarded special educational benefits discriminated against Arab citizens and must be annulled. The court originally gave the state one year to implement its ruling, i.e. until 27 February 2007.

The Supreme Court’s 2006 ruling was made by an expanded panel of seven justices and stated that because government’s decision to designate 535 towns and villages as NPA “A” in the field of education and grant them lucrative benefits included only four small Arab villages, the decision was grossly discriminatory. After the one year deadline passed, the Attorney General filed a motion to extend the period by five additional years on the ground that it was unable to implement it sooner for financial reasons. Adalah opposed this motion and demanded that the decision be applied immediately. Adalah argued that according to the state the cost of implementing the decision amounted to NIS 65 million only (around US $16,250,000) and that this cost cannot justify ongoing discrimination against Palestinian Arab citizens of the state.

The latest decision followed a motion of contempt of court filed by Adalah Attorneys Hassan Jabareen and Sawsan Zaher on behalf of the High Follow-Up Committee for the Arab Citizens of Israel and the High Follow-Up Committee on Arab Education and in Adalah’s own name. The petitioners demanded that the state be compelled to implement the court’s 2006 ruling without delay and be prevented from continuing to distribute benefits on the basis of criteria that discriminate against Arab citizens of Israel for a further five years.

In its decision of November 2008, which was delivered by an expanded seven-justice panel of court led by Chief Justice Dorit Beinisch, the court stated that the state’s failure to issue its ruling in the NPA case is a flagrant expression of its disdain for the decisions delivered by the court. Rather than obliging itself to implement the ruling, the state treated it as a mere recommendation to be implemented according to the state’s own list of priorities and within the timeframe it saw fit. The court further rejected the state’s claim that it is unable to implement the decision for budgetary reasons.