| Entrance to Katzir, a “community town” that operates an admission committee. Photo: Yaa’kov / Wikimedia Commons |
| In July 2023, the Knesset passed an amendment to the Cooperative Societies Ordinance, dubbed the “Admissions Committees Law”. The original law permits “admissions committees” almost complete discretion to screen applicants seeking to live in hundreds of “community towns”. The new amendment expands the law’s scope, and over time, the Minister of Economy and Industry will be authorized to permit admissions committees in larger and larger towns. Admissions committees screen applicants based on their perceived “suitability” to the “social and cultural fabric” of the community, and this process over the years has excluded Palestinian citizens of Israel as well as other marginalized groups. |
| The new law currently applies to more than 41% of all localities in Israel, and allows the operation of admissions committees in all regional councils, covering approximately 80% of the state’s territory. |
| Adalah, in its own name and on behalf of nine civil society organizations, filed a petition to the SCT on 21 September 2023 demanding the cancellation of the new amendment, as well as the annulment of original law passed in 2011. The petitioners argued that the 2011 law succeeded in maintaining segregated towns throughout Israel, and that the new amendment, aimed at ‘strengthening Jewish settlements’, underscores its discriminatory purpose towards Palestinian citizens and will also further harm other marginalized groups, who have been excluded. The petitioners in the SCT case include a wide range of NGOs representing these groups such as Jews from Arab and Muslim countries; Ethiopian Jews; women from Israel’s geographic and social peripheries; and transgender and gender-variant people. |
