A defeat for Shas in the struggle against the granting of a building permit for a shul of the Keter Chaim Association of former Shas MK Chaim Amsalem.

The Jerusalem Municipality’s appeals committee ruled that the local planning and building committee should grant a permit to build the shul after a five-year struggle between Shas and Jerusalem against the construction.

The affair began several years ago when the head of the Shas faction in Jerusalem, Nati Lasri, sent a letter claiming that the actual holding of the lot by Chaim Amsalem’s Keter Chaim Organization is scandalous and manifestly illegal. Thus, for several years, the movement struggled against granting a building permit to the shul to be built in the Har Nof neighborhood.

On the Planning and Building Committee, Shas managed to recruit members of Yahadut Hatorah, thereby repeatedly preventing the building permit.

In the last hearing, headed by committee chairman Meir Turgeman, the latter acted to pass the permit, and Shas responded to the appeals committee in order to prevent the permit. Now, the appeals committee decided to dismiss the petition out of hand and to charge the faction with the expenses of the petition for NIS 10,000.

The decision states: “We adopt the position of the professional team in the local committee and the majority’s position in the subcommittee, which allows the full construction of the daycare centers and above it the construction of the shul.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)