In a hearing held on 5 Tammuz 5773, the High Court of Justice criticized the poor provision of postal services in Arab areas of the capital, referring primarily to eastern areas of Yerushalayim. The court told authorities that the process of improving these services “needs to be accelerated.” The justices set another court hearing in four months’ time to monitor developments.
The petition was submitted by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) and representatives of the Arab neighborhoods in June 2010 against the Ministry of Communications, Israel Postal Company and the Jerusalem Municipality, who for decades have neglected to provide adequate postal services. “Delivery of mail to homes in East Jerusalem is infrequent and severely delayed in some areas, and completely non-existent in others. Though one in every three Jerusalem residents is Palestinian, there are only nine post offices in East Jerusalem, compared to more than forty offices in West Jerusalem. Residents are often obliged to leave their neighborhood to access services and rent a post office box.”
ACRI adds the poor state of postal services in those areas has severe implications and causes great harm and frustration to the residents. Official documents and bills sent by mail, for example from the tax authority and the courts, often reach their destinations after serious delays and sometimes never arrive at the correct address. In some neighborhoods mail items are left exposed in public spaces such as kiosks and mosques in ways that violate privacy.
A representative of the Jerusalem Municipality told the court that by the end of 2014 all nameless streets in the eastern capital will be named, and houses will be given numbers to enable delivery of mail directly to people’s homes.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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2 Responses
Let’s close down the branches there and let the arabs do the mail service there
There is poor service in nearly all of the country. This is due to the idiotic structure of the post office. It is a public company. That means that it is owned by the Government but run as a private operation. Nearly all post offices are private businesses and must run at a profit to stay open. Furthermore there are many conditions and restrictions as to whom can run a post office, where it can be and how it is to be run. Those are the true reasons for the lack of postal services in East Jerusalem and many, many other places as well.