Indeed, the compensation clause in the agreement regarding the cancellation of potato quotas was drafted in such a way that until the full cancellation of the quotas, the growers will be paid money at the expense of the compensation, according to the rate at which potato crops enter the autonomy, but the rest of the compensation, due to the growers for the cancellation of their growing quotas, will be paid upon the cancellation of the quotas. There is not, and never was, (certainly at the time of the negotiations that were conducted prior to the conclusion of the agreement) any connection (except for the issue of determining the rate of payment on account of the compensation until 1998, as stated above) between the entitlement of growers to compensation and the entry or non-entry of potatoes from the autonomy or the question of the existence of damage, if any, as a result of the cancellation of the quotas. As stated, the compensation was given due to the denial of the breeders' right to quotas. In this spirit, negotiations were conducted with the representatives of the growers, and this was even agreed. Nothing more.
I will further note that in my opinion, there was no doubt at the time of the signing of the agreement that significant realistic imports of potatoes from the autonomy were not expected, since the cultivation of potatoes there is not developed in light of the agricultural data. Therefore, no one thought that the promise of compensation was intended to protect against imports from the autonomy, since any significant imports from there were in any case unforeseeable.
There are other affidavits in the court file in the same vein – for example: the affidavit of Mr. Ephraim Shalom, the person who signed the agreement on behalf of the farmers – but it seems that there is no need for us to go further and exhaust the reader.
- These words of the representatives of the growers are explicit and unequivocal, and if there is any significance to clarifying the subjective intention of the contractors on the basis of external evidence, here is the proper case before us.
- If all this is not enough, we find that on May 9, 1996 – before the dispute broke out between the parties – Mr. Yonatan wrote to potato growers at the time he was serving as the Director General of the Ministry of Agriculture, and in his words he fully confirmed the words of the growers that the compensation was supposed to be given to them for the cancellation of the quotas. In the language of the letter in its original:
Ministry of Agriculture