Economist: Petition to the Supreme Court: The Mateh Yehuda Regional Council against Interior Minister Eli Yishai

Petition to the Supreme Court: The Mateh Yehuda Regional Council against Interior Minister Eli Yishai
The Economist System
6/05/2011
The Mateh Yehuda Regional Council petitioned the Supreme Court against Interior Minister Eli Yishai's decision to annex the industrial zones of Mateh Yehuda to the city of Beit Shemesh. In the petition, filed by attorneys Shlomi Turgene, Rina Lapidot and Yair Alani of the Afik Turgeman office and attorney Vered Cohen from the Legal Bureau of the Council, the Minister of the Interior, the Director-General of the Ministry, the Committee for the Investigation of Borders and the Distribution of Income, And its members, the Council seeks to issue an order nisi which will stop the implementation of the contrary decision, and the lawyers, even the internal procedures of the Ministry of the Interior.
In its petition, the Council claims that the Boundary Commission, which passed its conclusions to the Minister, acted without authority. In May 2008, the committee began its activity as a committee for income distribution only. Nevertheless, in July 2008, the Ministry of the Interior extended its authority to the borders committee.
The report of the committee that was submitted to Minister Yishai was based on a number of meetings in the presence of representatives of the local authorities, without the opinion of experts and professionals who would testify to the expected implications of the annexation. In one of the minutes of the committee that the lawyers joined, the mayor of Beit Shemesh, Moshe Abutbul, was quoted as saying: "We will turn to peace and land in return for peace."
The petition, which covers over 400 pages of arguments and appendices, argues that the Interior Minister's decision creates a dangerous precedent according to which politically connected local authorities are not required to invest development budgets and can operate their relations in order to transfer to their ownership populated areas.
The head of the Mateh Yehuda Regional Council, Moshe Dado, said: "Here is a kidnapping, a robbery in broad daylight that was unprecedented in the history of the State of Israel. The decision transfers productive and active industrial areas, which the Council has worked on for many years on their planning, development and marketing. Had the committee members examined the data in depth, they would have found that Mateh Yehuda is supported by balancing grants and many efforts. A large investment has managed to reduce the large deficit in recent years, while Beit Shemesh is a strong authority. There are distortions that have not existed since the Navot Hazraeli affair some 3,000 years ago. This is a puzzling and baseless decision. I want to believe that there are no extraneous considerations behind it. "
To this day, the Ministry of the Interior has been making changes in borders, especially in undeveloped areas, and in accordance with the meticulous procedure of the Ministry of the Interior. The protocols of the committee that were attached to the petition indicate that the mayor of Beit Shemesh, Moshe Abutbul, rejected the proposal to accept areas for development, explaining: There is a saying that until the consolation comes, the soul comes out. Wait until these areas are developed and we will begin to see marketing and municipal taxes. This is 20 years. Y.
It should be noted that the two authorities, Mateh Yehuda and Beit Shemesh, approached the committee out of a desire to reach agreements. The minister's decision is rather puzzling considering that Beit Shemesh originally asked for 2,000 dunams of the Mateh Yehuda area, but in practice it received more than 3,000 dunams of populated and developed land that generate millions of shekels a year and constitute all the industrial zones of the Mateh Yehuda Regional Council. Death sentence to council. This means that municipal business tax levies, estimated at tens of millions of shekels, "were taken from the council with a wave of the hand. In addition, some of the transferred areas are within the council area and do not border the jurisdiction of the city of Beit Shemesh. In light of the above, the council is considering the use of municipal property tax for Beit Shemesh for the Mateh Yehuda Regional Council in the amount of NIS 20 million.
 
In the photo: Head of the Council, Moshe Dadon, Attorney Yair Aloni of the Afik Turgeman office and attorney Vered Cohen from the Legal Bureau of the Council (Photo: PR)