Himanuta, on the other hand, claimed that the Patriarchate's attempt to present the compromise agreement as if it had been forced on it through the use of various pressures was a false claim that contradicted the evidence. She claimed that the Patriarchate acted in deceit and bad faith, hiding information from her while negotiating with her, giving her various "pretentious" explanations, and evading signing the agreement under various pretexts - all while simultaneously trying to carry out a round transaction with the involvement of a third party behind Himanuta's back.
- Before we dive into the provisions of the agreement itself, it is therefore important to remove from our path the thesis of coercion and oppression raised by the Patriarchate, which, as will be recalled, denies that any agreement was made between it and Himanuta in the first place, but takes care to preserve in the second hand the argument that if the agreement had been signed, there would have been room to discuss the flaws that supposedly occurred in its conclusion due to coercion and oppression.
The District Court's ruling was unequivocal on this issue, and I can only agree that the evidence "has no basis, even prima facie, for the Patriarchate's claim in its summaries of the oppression and exploitation of the Patriarch [...] if only by way of allusion" (paragraph 139 of his judgment). The evidence indicates that there was a dispute that took place over time, between the represented parties, including meetings, exchange of drafts, and the provision of comments, reservations and amendments. As the District Court added, the Patriarchate was represented by experienced and professional lawyers and was accompanied along the way by consultants. It should be added that it was the patriarchate that at a certain point proposed to replace the alternative of extending the lease period with an alternative of paying Limanuta in exchange for relinquishing its claims and deleting the warning notes, which further weakens the coercion and oppression thesis. I will recall that the particulars were signed when the criminal proceedings against the fraudsters had not yet been completed and when the Patriarchate's claim had not yet been decided, and it was probably guided by various and varied considerations to reach a settlement, and I will mention that some of the hidden issues in the affair in which the seals of the Patriarch and the Church were stamped on the sale agreement have not yet been clarified to this day. Even if I assume that during the period in which the contacts between the parties were conducted, various pressures were exerted (and in this context I will refer to the attempt to involve the late Minister Eitan), as the District Court held, taking into account the political and business considerations and motives involved in this sensitive affair, these pressures are "normal and inherent" to the situation. These are very far from the worlds of coercion and oppression according to Sections 18-17 Law The Contracts (General Part), 5733-1973 (hereinafter: The Contracts Law).