In view of the importance of these things, I will allow myself to add another comment. The fact that a law enjoys the protection of the law clause does not necessarily mean that if it were not for this protection, it would have conflicted with the Basic Laws or would have been repealed. A court is not supposed to hear theoretical matters. If a law enjoys the observance of the laws, it is not obligatory, and it is not desirable for the court to determine a position as to what would have been the situation if the law had been enacted after the Basic Laws. The decision is not required. The failure to deal with the issue does not express a position with respect to the other situation (it is possible that this is also the case with regard to the override clause). An example of the use of this section arose in the Mitral case [16]).
Either way, the rule of observance of the laws in our case is of additional importance. The Accreditation Law in general and the Ashkelon Municipality decision in particular were enacted about 40 years ago. This is a very long period, almost coinciding with the years of the state. Since 1969, no attempt has been brought to our attention to attack the law in Ashkelon until this case. The passage of time does not grant the law immunity from criticism, and certainly not from criticism of the Basic Laws that were enacted five or seven years ago. However, it seems to me that when a court comes to consider the interpretation of the law, against the background of the spirit of the provisions of the Basic Laws, which include the rule of observance of laws, this is significant.
So far, I have noted a number of considerations, which in my opinion are relevant to the task of interpreting a law, in the spirit of the Basic Laws. This is in a situation like the one at hand, in which the relevant law – the Enabling Law – is clear in its language. Therefore, the work of interpretation focuses on the possibility of limiting the discretion exercised by the entity being examined. and for our purposes, limiting the discretion of the municipality to order a sweeping prohibition on the sale of pork.