In the same letter, the Ministry of the Interior rejected the municipality's attempt to rely on previous similar cases in which the Minister of Interior had been approved, and explicitly stated that these were exceptional cases that stemmed from the municipality's budgetary distress and that this does not indicate the general public.
It reads:
"It should be noted that, in your reply to our letter, you did state that you are aware that the contract is based on future plans that have not yet been advanced and approved, and that the contract does not correspond to the currently approved planning situation, and that "in order to issue permits for the construction of the project in question, many planning procedures are required, including changes in city building plans on the land" (from your letter). You noted that despite the planning incompatibility, you are of the opinion that this does not prevent the granting of the approval, both because the contract includes a planning stage, including the submission of applications to change the zoning of the land and changes in plans (so that in the end, at the construction stage, the construction will be in accordance with the plan), and because the Ministry of the Interior has approved similar transactions in the past in which the developer assumed responsibility for planning the areas.
In this regard, we emphasize that even if in the past the Ministry of the Interior approved transactions for the Bat Yam Municipality in which the developer assumed responsibility for the planning of the areas, this was against the background of special and exceptional circumstances and due to the existence of a special public interest, which stemmed mainly from the Authority's budgetary distress at the time, and against the background of the need to transfer the transaction proceeds to the municipality's budget afterwards. The exceptional special circumstances that existed in the past do not indicate a rule that is well known to the municipality as well."
- It is clear from these statements that in November 2017 the municipality was well aware of the firm position of the Ministry of the Interior , and insofar as this position was not understood to it in the past, it received unequivocal clarifications.
However, despite all these answers from the Ministry of the Interior, the municipality chose, in bad faith, to conceal this vital and essential information from the company.