Culture Ministry agrees to reinstate funding to Al-Midan Theater following petition and AG intervention

On 29 March 2016, Adalah and the State Prosecutor informed the Israeli Supreme Court that Al-Midan Theater reached an agreement with the Israeli Ministry of Culture to resume the transfer of public funds to the theater. The agreement was made following a petition filed in October 2015 by Adalah on behalf of Al-Midan Theater, against the decision by the Culture Ministry in May 2015 to freeze its public funding to the theater for political reasons. The former Attorney General earlier issued an opinion on the case, in August 2015, stating that public funds could not be allocated based on artistic content.

According to the agreement, the theater will receive the full amount of funds owed to it in 2015. Al-Midan agreed to a deduction of NIS 75,000 (2.5%) from its annual budgets for the years 2016 to 2019 to offset certain budgetary imbalances. The parties agreed to withdraw the petition the agreement.

The Culture Ministry announced the freezing of the funds following the performance of the play “A Parallel Time” by director Bashar Murkus. Regarding this context, Adalah Attorneys Sawsan Zaher and Muna Haddad wrote in their petition that the decision was illegal and was made on grounds that do not meet the basic requirements of administrative law: no hearing was held before the decision was made; no formal reasoning was provided for the decision; the decision was contrary to the recommendation of the Financial Support Committee; and it did not have any proper factual basis.”

The petition further argued that, “The minister's decision was made contrary to decisions made by the organizations in charge of the matter. The play was approved three times by professional bodies, including the Financial Support Committee, which is supported both by the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Education, and it was even confirmed to be a part of the culture basket [state-supported performances for students].”

Following the agreement, Adalah stated: “It is unfortunate that it was only after the intervention of the Attorney General that the Ministry of Culture retracted its illegal freezing of funds and its attack on the theater’s freedom of expression and artistic creativity. The most important thing for us is that the agreement made between the theater and the ministry did not impose any prohibition or conditioning of the creative content produced by the theater.”

Case citation: HCJ69821/15, Al-Midan Theatre v. the Ministry of Culture and the Minister of Culture