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IN-DEPTH FEATURES
On November 15, 2000, just over four years ago, dozens of
families were stunned when the Israel Land Administration
Auction Committee announced that it was nullifying the
results of an auction it had held for building lots in the
Shachar neighborhood of Beit Shemesh and canceling the
contracts it had signed — after discovering that the
majority of the successful bidders were chareidim. The
various authorities involved—the Housing Ministry, the
Land Authority and the City of Beit Shemesh — wanted to
designate the new neighborhood for secular Israelis, in order
to halt the spread of the city's chareidi population.
The decision by the Auction Committee, with its accompanying
pretexts and deceitful arguments, greatly angered the winning
bidders, some of whom had even already signed leasing and
development contracts with the Israel Land Administration
(ILA - Minhal Mekarka'ei Yisrael). Shortly thereafter, a
petition was filed and soon rejected by the Magistrates'
Court.
However on appeal, the High Court found the cancellation of
the contracts illegal. The case was then sent back to
Magistrates' Court, which recently determined that the
auction was valid and that the State must uphold the
contracts. Neither did the court spare the State a tongue-
lashing for discriminating against chareidim, in a ruling
jurists consider a precedent regarding State-sponsored
discrimination against the chareidi sector.
The final decision was handed down on November 15, 2004,
exactly four years after the Auction Committee's original,
shameful decision.
While for projects of this scale a developer typically
conducts market surveys before launching anything, in this
case the Land Administration failed to do so and the chareidi
public, which is expanding quickly in Beit Shemesh, responded
to the offer despite the government's intention to settle the
area as a secular neighborhood.
Based on the trend of recent years, the secular public will
not be coming to live in Beit Shemesh in the future,
either.
Chareidim Ready and Willing to Buy
Upon completion, Ramat Beit Shemesh Gimmel is slated to
include 2,300 residential units (out of 15,000 planned for
the entire development area) and has even been given the name
"Ramat HaNevi'im" (the streets in the neighborhood were named
after Jewish prophets). 2,300 is a large neighborhood —
about the size of Ramat Shlomo-Shuafat in Yerushalayim.
The new neighborhood was placed on the market four-and-a-half
years ago by the Ministry of Housing and the City of Beit
Shemesh and a portion was offered to the general population
under the Bnei Beitcha program. Ninety-four lots zoned for
the construction of 103 residential units were put up for
bid. The Bnei Beitcha program offers an opportunity to own a
free-standing home that the successful bidder builds
himself.
The advertising campaign preceding the auction for the new
suburb was waged "to enhance the image of the neighborhoods
slated for construction," explained Housing Ministry
officials, and attempted to conceal the fact that the project
was in Beit Shemesh, which had already acquired a reputation
as a chareidi city, particularly the new neighborhoods.
Eight years ago (that is, four years prior to the auction in
Ramat Beis Shemesh Gimmel) the Housing Ministry originally
wanted to market Ramat Beit Shemesh Alef (Ramat HaNechalim)
to the secular and national-religious sectors, setting aside
a smaller neighborhood known as Ramat Beit Shemesh Beit
(Ramat HaTana'im), for the chareidi sector. When those
efforts to market Ramat Beit Shemesh Alef failed,
enterprising chareidim stepped into the picture and met great
success in marketing the neighborhood to the chareidi public,
which now comprises over 60 percent of its residents.
The chareidi entrepreneurs said the Shachar neighborhood was
destined for the same sort of failure, from the outset, since
the general public had already demonstrated its lack of
interest in Beit Shemesh when Ramat Beit Shemesh Alef went on
the market.
The two neighborhoods, Ramat HaNechalim and Ramat HaTana'im
(Ramat Beit Shemesh Alef and Beit), increased the area of the
city of Beit Shemesh by thousands of acres and by tens of
thousands of new residents. Shachar, the new neighborhood in
Ramat Beit Shemesh Gimmel (Ramat HaNevi'im), is located at
the southern entrance to Ramat HaNechalim. Thousands of units
are slated for construction, along with extensive green
areas. According to Housing Ministry long-range plans, if the
project succeeds, up to 30,000 apartments may be built on the
site, which has plenty of land reserves available. That is a
development the size of Ramot, and approaching the size of
Bnei Brak.
Gedolei Hador Bless the Enterprise
When the prospective buyers in the Shachar neighborhood
turned out to be mostly chareidim, Housing Ministry officials
were caught by surprise. A Yediot Achronot article
accused the chareidim of attempting "to take over" the entire
project. "Chareidim know that two or three lots of black-clad
chareidi families are enough to chase away secular Jews once
and for all. Dozens of chareidi buyers have already expressed
an interest in purchasing lots to build homes at the entrance
to the Shachar neighborhood."
Somehow the media and the Housing Ministry seem to have
forgotten the concept of a auction: whoever submits the
highest bid wins.
The first chareidi figure to realize the potential of Shachar
and Ramat HaNevi'im was Rabbi Moshe Wislowsky, head of the
Nachalas Shlomo Association, which was named after Maran
HaRav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, with his son HaRav Shmuel
Auerbach ylct"a as president. Rabbi Wislowsky also
works for HaRav Shmuel's yeshiva, Maalos HaTorah.
After the majority of apartment units in Ramat HaNechalim
were sold to chareidi buyers, many chareidim became
interested in Shachar, which held out the possibility of
building a spacious, free-standing, single-family home for
about the same price as a standard apartment in Jerusalem.
Gedolei Yisroel backed the initiative.
Like previous projects, the majority of the bidders were
chareidim. "The collective purchase of several projects by
chareidi families has given the city a chareidi label," wrote
Mrs. Zamir, who served as district director for the Housing
Ministry for many years, during which she unsuccessfully
tried to hamper/hinder/impede the chareidi public. Mrs. Zamir
is the wife of former Israeli High Court Justice Yitzhak
Zamir, which one might have expected would heighten her sense
of fairness.
"It was not a chareidi takeover of the auction," says Rabbi
Wislowsky. "It was a golden opportunity to receive a free
gift from the State."
While the Housing Ministry only advertised in the secular
press, Rabbi Wislowsky privately placed ads in the chareidi
press, both in Eretz Yisroel and abroad, to draw a large
number of chareidim to the housing lot auction.
"The Housing Ministry openly tried to stop the chareidim. I
say this based on personal knowledge of what really happened.
They did everything in their power to stop the chareidim.
They were afraid of what they called `the chareidi takeover.'
"
Two days before the bidding for the Shachar neighborhood was
closed, Beit Shemesh Councilman Eliezer Greenbaum of Degel
HaTorah paid a visit to HaRav Aharon Leib Steinman to ask for
his blessing. He gave it. "May HaKodosh Boruch Hu help
the community of chareidim ledevar Hashem in Beit
Shemesh go forward and grow. They say, `Pen yirbeh,
and ruach hakodesh says, `Kein yirbeh,' and may
there be brochoh and hatzlochoh."
Majority of Winners Chareidim
The Israel Land Administration auction closed well ahead of
its original schedule, to prevent more chareidim from
submitting bids.
A total of 158 bids were submitted for Bnei Beitcha lots,
even though no bids were submitted for 31 of the 103 lots.
The Auctions Committee convened at the end of September 2000
and accepted 72 bids. The winners received written notice
including the lot number they had won, along with a request
that they contact the Land Administration to arrange all of
the matters in the list of conditions, pay development costs
and the price of the land itself—several hundred
thousand shekels—and sign the development agreement.
One month later, a meeting was held between the auction
winners and representatives of the Housing Ministry. There
was no mention of any problem with the results of the auction
by the Housing Ministry reps. Some of the winners signed
development contracts with the State and others paid large
sums based on the commitments they had undertaken as
stipulated in the auction. Some of them also took out
mortgage loans.
The Housing Ministry had claimed the majority of the winners
were secular Jews. Ministry Spokesman Kobi Bleich had even
released an official statement after the auction saying, "A
chareidi attempt to take over the Shachar neighborhood in
Ramat Beit Shemesh, which the Housing Ministry designated for
the secular and national-religious public, failed. Of the 80
winners in the Bnei Beitcha auction, chareidim won only 16
lots."
After seeing the winning bidders face-to-face, the high-
ranking Housing Ministry officials at the meeting were in
shock: of the 72 winners, 50 were chareidim and only 20 were
not religious.
High Court Accepts Petition
Upon discovering that most of the winning bidders were
chareidim, Shlomo Ben-Eliyahu, then director-general of the
Housing Ministry, asked the Auctions Committee to annul the
auction, after receiving an opinion from then Attorney
General Eliakim Rubinstein. Later, the court learned that Ben-
Eliyahu told Rubinstein and the Auctions Committee that the
winners had not yet signed contracts. Based on Ben-Eliyahu's
misrepresentation, with lightning speed—just a single
day's time—the committee decided to cancel the
auction.
The following day, letters were sent to the winners,
explaining that the decision to cancel was made, "in light of
the State's inability to recover the development costs that
have been invested and are to be invested at the site, and in
light of anticipated marketing difficulties. This is based on
the professional opinion of the Ministry of Construction and
Housing."
A few weeks later, a letter was sent to the auction winners
with an unequivocal notice that the agreements had been
cancelled. The Housing Ministry also suggested that the
auction winners accept other lots in Ramat Nechalim, but 11
of them insisted on retaining the lots that were being taken
away from them.
Lacking other recourse, they contacted Attorney Rabbi
Mordechai Green (who was later appointed director of
Betzedek, an organization founded by the American Agudath
Yisroel and charged with fighting legal battles against anti-
chareidi discrimination). Together with Attorney Yehoshua
Nanner, Attorney Green petitioned the Jerusalem Magistrates'
Court, demanding that the cancellation be declared unjust.
Judge Tzvi Cohen rejected the petition, claiming that the
auction had been annulled fairly.
Rather than conceding, Rabbi Green filed a High Court appeal
in the name of the 11 petitioners. The panel of judges,
headed by High Court President Aharon Barak, accepted the
appeal, saying that contracts signed with the petitioners
could not be cancelled. Still, it returned the case to the
Magistrates' Court to consider the matter of the petitioners
who had not yet signed contracts but had been in advanced
stages of negotiations with the Housing Ministry.
The State Must Honor Contracts
In her ruling, Judge Tzur, who received the case from the
High Court, wrote that the Housing Ministry and the Land
Administration failed to convincingly demonstrate that the
cancellation of the contracts was justifiable.
The State claimed that the decision to cancel the auction was
made based on two vital interests: economic damage and a
desire to keep the State's limited land reserves, especially
in the Jerusalem area, until a suitable time to make use of
them. But the judge was unmoved by these arguments, and in a
long decision she attacked the Housing Ministry and the Land
Administration for annulling the auction for the simple
reason, the winners were chareidim, stressing that the law
prohibits canceling lawfully-signed contracts.
"The release law cannot be used to allow the government
authority to release itself from an agreement merely because
it discovered that continuing to honor it is not worthwhile
from an economic standpoint," wrote Judge Tzur in her
decision. "As a rule, the government authority should not be
permitted to reverse its commitments, based on considerations
of economic prudence, except in extreme cases of criminal
negligence in handling public funds in a manner inconsistent
with the principles of proper government and public propriety
. . . In order for a government authority to produce a
rationale to discharge itself from the contract, it must
prove that a vital public interest is liable to be harmed as
a result of upholding the contract. Inconvenience or economic
imprudence does not constitute a reason to begin a release
action."
According to the ruling, the auction had been an invitation
to the public at large to lease land on which to build homes.
"This is a commercial contract in every way, and in order to
be released from a commitment of this type, the government
authority had to demonstrate the existence of a clear, vital,
public interest that supersedes the fundamental rule that
contracts must be honored. This applies in general and in the
case of the government authority contracts specifically."
Government Must Abide by Principle of
Equality
During the course of the court proceedings, the State said
that since only a small number of people won in the auction,
it would harm the State's ability to sell the lots and to
recover its development outlays, but the judge rejected this
argument. "It is inadequate to serve as grounds for the
annulment of the auction, and certainly not to be released
from a binding agreement. Had the government authority wanted
to stipulate in advance that the auction would be executed
only if there were a sufficient number of bidders and
winners, it should have written this clearly in the auction
conditions."
Yet no such condition was stated. "In fact the auction
directives states that the bidders were required to keep to
all of the payment conditions of purchasing the lots," she
notes. "Indeed, the petitioners fulfilled this condition;
some of them sold their apartments, took out mortgage loans,
and as a rule made major commitments based on the assumption
and legitimate expectation that the respondents would honor
the agreement they had committed to. From a factual
standpoint as well, it was not proven that the number of
winners of lots was small compared to the number of lots
offered for sale, and certainly did not constitute sufficient
reason for the cancellation of agreements with the successful
bidders."
The court also noted that it found the State's conduct
disturbing, for when the government supposedly learned of the
small number of winners it did not take any action towards
canceling the auction in the early stages, before the
petitioners made hefty financial outlays. The State claimed
that the 158 bids submitted fell far short of the 1,000 bids
it anticipated receiving.
"This shows the respondents knew before the envelopes were
opened and the winners declared that there was a problem with
the auction. If so, why did they continue with the auction
proceedings?" wonders the judge, noting that the cancellation
proceedings immediately followed the Housing Ministry meeting
to which the winners were invited.
The court also rejected the Housing Ministry's and the Israel
Land Administration's claim that the development was designed
only for the general (non-religious) population and that the
advertising specifically targeted this sector. "The auction
itself," writes the judge, "makes no stipulation, certainly
not a clear stipulation, that the project is designated for
the general population — and for good reason. The
respondents, as the State authority and delegate, are subject
to the principles of equality and the avoidance of
discrimination, and on the basis of these principles, clearly
this type of project should be open to all. Members of the
public cannot be prevented from participating in it based on
religious affiliation. Even if the respondents determined
that the auction was designated for a certain segment of the
population, others cannot be prevented from taking part in
the auction. In other words, not only may an auction not be
designated only for the general population, but from the time
that the auction was launched, a particular participant
cannot be prevented from taking part."
Minority Group vs. Majority Group
The judge writes two fundamental sentences that will
invariably be cited in many future petitions on the topic of
anti-chareidi discrimination: "For good reason it was not
written in the auction that it was intended only for the
general population. While it is considered acceptable to
build residential neighborhoods designated for a sector with
a special way of life and a special character or set of
needs, it is not acceptable to build a residential
neighborhood and, by saying that it is designated solely for
the general population (which does not include chareidim), to
prevent someone from the public from participating in the
auction."
On the Housing Ministry's intention to discriminate against
the chareidi public in the auction for the new neighborhood
by placing ads of a pointedly secular nature, the judge
writes, "The legal constraint against placing media
advertisements that discriminate against a certain sector of
the population by removing them from the target group for a
neighborhood stems from the principle of equality. However,
the prohibition certainly is not limited to such
advertisements. Obviously, the same reasons that prevent
placing a discriminatory advertisement, prevent one from
acting in a discriminatory manner in practice by preventing
members of the chareidi sector from purchasing housing units
in a neighborhood designated for the general population."
She also writes that the general demand for separation (that
is, for neighborhoods that are exclusively chareidi and built
to the same standards as other developments of the Ministry
of Housing) that is made by a certain sector, such as the
chareidi sector, "cannot be made by the majority group, in
seeking to block the rights of the members of the other group
seeking to integrate with and to adjust to the way of life of
the general community without harming its character.
"However, in the case where the demand for separation is made
by the members of a group seeking to preserve its culture and
protect itself from alien elements that do not want to
integrate into it, it appears one should accept [that demand]
due to the harm liable to be caused to the unique community
[from not accepting the demand]. Nevertheless, any form of
discrimination should be totally rejected, including
discrimination in housing on an individual basis. The
difference in personal characteristics is insufficient to
warrant different treatment.
"Therefore, there is an essential difference between
allocating land for a chareidi neighborhood on the one hand,
and disallowing individual chareidim to purchase land in a
neighborhood designated for the general population. However,
it is of course understood that if a secular individual
wishes to purchase a housing unit in a neighborhood
designated for the chareidi population, this should not be
denied to him."
Neighborhood Did Not Have a Chareidi
Image
The State also claimed that because a significant number of
auction winners were chareidim that gave the neighborhood a
chareidi image, generating concerns that this would put an
end to the sale of the remaining lots to the general public
on the one hand, and that not enough chareidim would be found
to buy them all on the other.
"The respondents did not present a sufficient factual basis
for their claims regarding the chareidi image of the
neighborhood supposedly formed and of any inability to sell
it in the future. On the one hand, the respondents claimed
there are only a small number of chareidim who were
successful in the auction. On the other hand, it remains
unclear how a small number of chareidi winners could
determine a chareidi character for such a large neighborhood.
Even if there were a majority of chareidi winners it would
not justify the cancellation of the auction and the
respondents' release from the contract that they struck with
the petitioners. In fact it appears that there was an
administrative attempt to interfere with a legitimate social
process. The respondents made a full commitment to the
agreement and [the State] would have had to present a
substantive public reason to justify its release from the
agreement."
To support its claim that the chareidi public would have been
unable to populate the whole site, the State presented the
court with a survey of chareidi apartment purchasers in Ramat
Beit Shemesh, to shed light on the demand for housing in the
chareidi sector. Attorney Green said the surveys were dated,
pointing out that while it indicated the chareidi sector
purchased 200 apartment per year in Ramat Beit Shemesh, in
fact nearly 1,300 apartments were purchased.
"The State did not submit the surveys to the court in an
orderly fashion," writes Judge Tzur. "The court received an
assortment of documents, some of which were unclear, and
without a professional, detailed and clear analysis of the
data as a whole and its ramifications for the neighborhood,
which is the subject of the petition. It should be kept in
mind that the issue was a decision by a public entity
arrogating to itself the exceptional right to release itself
from a binding contract. As such, it was incumbent upon the
respondents to present the court with a detailed, evidential,
current and persuasive foundation. The respondents did not
meet this incumbency."
Unfounded Assumptions
The judge discussed at length the surveys submitted by the
Housing Ministry according to which it said that only 200
apartments are purchased annually by the chareidi sector in
Ramat Beit Shemesh. An analysis of the actual data submitted
reveals that the average is in fact much higher. Seven years
ago, 430 units were purchased, and based on growth figures,
in 2005 that number will reach 545. Thus the judge disputed
the claim of inadequate demand from chareidi home-buyers.
Judge Tzur cites the Central Bureau for Statistics survey of
Beit Shemesh, which shows sharp increases in the population
of Beit Shemesh and Ramat Beit Shemesh in particular,
especially in 2002. "To the overall population growth of the
city of Beit Shemesh over the past several years a great
contribution was made by the settling of the new neighborhood
Ramat Beit Shemesh, where the majority of the population is
chareidi and religious," reads the CBS report. Therefore, the
judge concluded, the surveys submitted by the State in
defense of its position in the Shachar neighborhood are out
of date and do not give grounds for any specific inferences
about the new neighborhood in question.
In its brief, the State also claimed that the high percentage
of chareidi auction winners would compromise its ability to
market the neighborhood to the secular sector. "These
fundamental assumptions are ungrounded," writes Judge Tzur.
"[Therefore] this type of assumption is not sufficient to
justify a step as extreme and unusual on the part of the
State as releasing itself from an agreement."
She also quotes a letter by the then Housing Ministry
Director-General, Shlomo Ben-Eliyahu, to the Auctions
Committee asking it to cancel the signed contracts. In the
letter, he expresses concerns that the neighborhood would not
be marketable because the large supply of apartments in [the
chareidi neighborhood of] Ramat Nechalim had not been sold
due to a lack of demand from the chareidi sector (even though
the facts were to the contrary, that there was a big demand
from the chareidi community) and [on the other hand]
prospective secular purchasers would not want to buy in a
neighborhood with a chareidi image. Ben-Eliyahu also sought
to restrict the area of settlement of the chareidim in Eretz
Yisroel, noting "several towns were built for the chareidi
sector in recent years: Beitar Illit, Tel Tzion, Modi'in
Illit and Elad."
But the judge remained unconvinced, saying there was no
support for the claim that the small number of chareidim who
won in the auction would translate into a chareidi image for
the whole neighborhood "and even if a `chareidi' image was
created there is no evidence that the non-chareidi population
would avoid purchasing apartments in the Shachar
neighborhood."
Auction Cancelled, Development Work
Continued
As another argument in favor of its canceling the contracts,
the State said that it had invested enormous sums in
developing the new neighborhood even before actual
construction began—including NIS 15 million to lay an
access road to the site, NIS 40 million for development
work—and that the total cost of development would come
to NIS 220 million. The Housing Ministry also claimed that in
any case it has no intentions of selling the lots and
building anything there in the coming years.
Yet the petitioners presented photographs demonstrating that
even two-and-a-half years after the contract was cancelled
and the court petition was filed, the Housing Ministry
continued to perform development work such as laying a road,
building a sewage system, laying electrical and phone lines,
providing drainage and building stairs and supporting walls.
The judge said that this laid the onus of proof on the State
that it did not intend to develop the area.
Regarding the State's claim that the work had continued due
to "previous commitments" and not because it truly intends to
build there, Judge Tzur writes, "It is unclear how this can
be consistent with the argument that money went to waste as a
result of continuing development work. If the development has
no purpose and there is no intention of building a
neighborhood in the area, why should `previous commitments,'
whose nature was not made clear, justify development work in
vain, for which all of the financial investment will go to
waste?"
Judge Tzur found another instance of misrepresentation by
Housing Ministry officials. In his letter to the Auctions
Committee, Ben-Eliyahu writes that NIS 500 million had been
spent on development, infrastructures and institutions.
"Attributing these to the auction led the Auctions Committee
to the mistaken impression these costs applied to the Shachar
neighborhood alone. This assumption was erroneous since this
figure applied to the total development costs for all of Beit
Shemesh."
The Letter From the Mayor
During the proceedings, the State claimed circumstances had
changed since the contracts were signed with the winning
bidders, making the project difficult to execute. As proof,
the State presented a letter from Beit Shemesh Mayor Danny
Vaknin saying, "The marketing of the housing construction
will not be promoted until the wheels of the MBC [Main
Business Center] are set into motion and actual work is
underway. The factor that will accelerate the intelligent
development of the lands under construction surrounding the
MBC is affected by the progress of the MBC. In light of the
above, I would be glad to hear from [contractors] to execute
the development and infrastructure work before the
construction surrounding the MBC is marketed." (For more
about the MBC, see sidebar.)
Nevertheless, Judge Tzur rejected the letter that seems to
have been instigated by the Housing Ministry, saying it
contradicts another letter by the City Planner saying the
Shachar project was approved by all of the relevant
committees as far back as mid-1999. "It seems totally
irrelevant to make the construction of the Shachar
neighborhood contingent on the construction of a city center
that has no connection to the neighborhood. On the contrary,
based on the letter from the City Engineer of Beit Shemesh,
it clearly emerges that the decisions regarding the
designated time to put the Shachar neighborhood on the market
is in the hands of the State."
She also points out that despite the Mayor's demand to
continue "rolling the wheels of the MBC," according to the
City Planner's letter "the wheels of the MBC" continue to
roll forward and the project will take a decade to reach
completion.
In her conclusion, Tzur determined that the Auctions
Committee's decision to cancel the auction and the contracts
was illegal and the agreements signed between the petitioners
and the State must be enforced according to a new six-month
timetable for the execution of the contracts.
A Precedent
"This is a precedent-setting decision in matters related to
allocating land for distinctive groups," says Attorney
Mordechai Green, who filed the case four years ago, before
the organization he now heads, Betzedek, was founded. "Of
course, land allocated for the chareidi population is based
on its needs. According to the law, a secular individual can
come to live in a chareidi neighborhood, but in the converse
situation, the judge has determined, land cannot be allocated
for the general population while preventing a certain
population from living there."
The judge also determined that the State may only release
itself from a contract signed with a body or individual under
very extreme circumstances, says Attorney Green. "The court
determined that the Housing Ministry did not prove the basis
for its claims on canceling the auction," he explains. "They
tried to claim that if chareidim won the auction, the
neighborhood could not be sold to secular buyers and that
also the buying power of the chareidi public would not allow
the sale of all of the apartments planned to be built. They
relied on dated statistical findings while we proved in
court, using current findings, that the buying power of the
chareidi public in Beit Shemesh is enormous, with tremendous
potential. It also came to light during the proceedings that
despite the State's claims of hundreds of millions in losses,
these claims could not be proven. The State was unable to
produce any of the documents the court requested."
The ruling also found that the Housing Ministry lied to the
Auctions Committee by claiming the contracts had not been
signed when it requested the cancellation of the results.
"None of the State officials examined during the case managed
to provide precise details. They were unable to prove any of
their claims, because they did not have evidence. This was
because the real reason for the annulment of the auction was
not the reasons that they gave, but rather just to keep the
chareidim from coming there to live," says Attorney Green.
The State is unlikely to appeal the decision, he adds, since
it is based on a very clear ruling and on facts the Housing
Ministry was unable to challenge during the years of the
proceedings. Attorney Green says the case also proved,
"Stubbornness pays off. The Housing Ministry was sure it
could treat the chareidi public lightly and infringe on its
rights. But to its surprise, the chareidim showed they know
how to fight for their rights—and win."
Two years ago, Beit Shemesh was up in arms. The municipality
and the Housing Ministry decided to promote the construction
of an enormous project called the Main Business Center slated
to include entertainment and cultural centers and
institutions, playhouses and movie theaters, a university
with student dorms, a huge amphitheater, a large swimming
pool, a municipality building, a library, an auditorium, a
college, large playing fields, playing courts and other
sports facilities, two retirement hostels and an enormous
open area for fairs, ceremonies and shows.
The designated site for the MBC is the entrance to Ramat Beit
Shemesh, in between Ramat Hanechalim and Ramat Hanevi'im,
near the Shachar neighborhood. The building plans extend over
hundreds of dunams—an area of a kilometer-and-a-half
square. Perhaps the framers of the grandiose plan did not
take the residents of Ramat Hanechalim into account, not
bothering to ask them if they are willing to see such a
gigantic center built alongside the neighborhood.
The enormous center poses an enormous spiritual threat to the
thousands of chareidi and religious residents living in the
neighborhoods nearby. If built, thousands of people might
come to the city every day for entertainment and shopping.
Furthermore the hostels and dorms would not house observant
residents. This could seriously harm the tone of the chareidi
neighborhoods, particularly Ramat Hanechalim. Some are
concerned that the entertainment spots and malls would even
be open on Shabbos, and would damage public modesty in the
city's chareidi neighborhoods, which are home to a large
number of chareidim who enjoy a Torah-based environment
filled with Torah schools and institutions, botei
medrash and botei knesses.
Mayor Danny Vaknin, the municipality, and the Housing
Ministry, have done everything in their power to promote the
plan, in order to halt the "chareidi spread" southward
towards the lands designated for the future Ramat Hanevi'im.
Thousands of current chareidi residents submitted objections
to the Regional Committee based on instructions from
maranan verabonon and local rabbonim.
At present, the plan has received approval despite opposition
from the majority of Ramat Beit Shemesh residents. But its
execution remains uncertain. "One thing is clear: the current
plans for the MBC would destroy the chareidi neighborhoods,"
says Councilman Rabbi Moshe Montag of Degel HaTorah. "It is
also clear that building it in accordance with the original
plans would be a realization of the Mayor's aspirations to
halt the spread of the chareidim to Ramat Hanevi'im. This is
also clear from Vaknin's letter about `rolling the wheels of
the MBC,' in which he claimed that only after the plan is
approved and built will it be possible to sell Ramat
Hanevi'im."
But Rabbi Montag says that a very different picture is taking
shape. "The court's decision to approve the construction of
the Shachar neighborhood against the State's opinion and to
allow the chareidi winners of the auctions to make use of
their [right to build] will lead, sooner or later, to the
construction of thousands of residential units in the new
neighborhood. In that case, presumably, no entrepreneur would
be willing to put his money into building grandiose cultural
and entertainment facilities near and inside a chareidi
neighborhood, because the buildings might remain empty, and
the investment of tens or even hundreds of millions would go
to waste."
For now the wheels of the MBC are stuck and it does not
appear the Mayor will be able to get it rolling in the
foreseeable future. Hopefully the next elections will bring a
change in the city government. Beit Shemesh overall is
considered a religious city, and it does not deserve a mayor
who wars with the chareidi community.
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