Adalah Withdraws Petition on Religious Buildings Budget

Today, under pressure from the Supreme Court, Adalah withdrew a petition calling for equality in the allocation of the religious buildings budget.  The Court cited improvement in achieving equal allocation, and requested that Adalah wait until the 2001 budget law is approved before taking further legal action.

In February 2000, Adalah filed a petition against the Minister of Religious Affairs (MRA), the Minister of Interior (MOI) and the Minister of Housing (MOH) arguing that the current criteria for granting funds from the religious buildings (e.g., mosques, churches, religious courts) budget discriminates against the Arab Muslim, Christian and Druze communities.  The court granted an order nisi and a temporary injunction freezing the distribution of NIS 125 million from the religious buildings budget.  At the request of the Ministry of Finance (MOF), the Court waived the injunction, replacing it with a commitment by MOF to allocated these funds to Arab communities, should the Court accept Adalah’s petition.

The MRA responded in June 2000 that the Jewish community had unique religious building needs which were not shared by other religious communities.  Specifically, the MRA maintained that Mikva’ot, buildings which hold water sources for Jewish ritual purification, represent a need which does not have parallels in other religious communities, and which requires a sizable budget allocation for building and maintenance.  The MRA provided statistics showing that if the Mikva’ot were removed from the budget, Arab religious communities would make up 25% of the budget.  Thus, the defendants argued that equality had been preserved in the religious buildings budget.

Adalah counter-argued that the budget preparation did not clearly specify the ways in which different communities’ needs were to be represented in the budget, which failed to provide sufficient funds for maintenance of Arab religious buildings.  Adalah further argued that there were no clear and standard criteria for budget allocation.  This creates a situation in which budget allocation is highly dependent on the discretion of the Minister of Religious Affairs, which could lead to budget manipulation.  In response to this argument, and based on Adalah’s previous case addressing budget allocations for religious cemeteries, the Supreme Court criticized the MRA for not setting clear criteria in the budget law.

At a hearing in December 2000, the Supreme Court urged the MRA to create a proposal for the 2001 religious buildings budget which would ensure equality in funding.  Today’s hearing was in response to this proposal. Adalah argued that the state’s budget proposal was inadequate and failed to apply the remedies included in the original petition.  However, the Supreme Court pressured Adalah to withdraw the petition on the grounds that there had been progress in the MRA’s use of budget criteria. The MRA has committed itself to dividing the budget into 3 categories: synagogues, Mikva’ot, and buildings for Arab religious communities; and it has committed itself to ensuring separate but equal funding for each. The Supreme Court urged Adalah to wait until the 2001 budget was approved and then challenge it if it fails to ensure equality in allocation.  The budget approval has been delayed until late March because of the national elections. The Court granted Adalah NIS 5,000 for legal fees.