The Arad City Council in recent weeks succeeded in allocating funds earmarked for the development of chassidic kindergartens to renovate a local dati leumi state school, preferring to leave the chassidim without the badly-needed funding. However, despite the defeat, the Gerrer community registered a major victory against the city in the legal arena.

Beersheva Judge Ron Sulkin on Tuesday, 5 Menachem Av, canceled the indictments filed in the framework of a petition by the local planning and building committee of the Arad Municipality against 20 families in the local Gerrer community for placing gas balloons in the building without a permit.

The story is based on the fact that all the houses are connected to an underground gas infrastructure in the city of Arad. Since underground gas prices are higher than using above-ground gas balloons, several Gur Chassidim installed standard gas cylinders as are seen around the country. This led to the city taking legal measures against them.

With the installation, the attorney general, Chaim Shiman complained to the municipal planning committee, demanding that the residents placed the gas tanks which require a permit, which they did not receive.

From this point things began to roll in the courts, first in the District Court, which sided with the Gur Chassidim, which was explained by Rabbi Tzvi Bialystok and attorney Tzvi Rosenthal, who represented the defendants. An appeal was filed by the city in the Magistrate Court. The judge overruled the earlier decision. The matter then went to the High Court of Justice, and Justice Meni Mazuz, who discussed the petition, ruled in a two-prong fashion.

On Tuesday, the parties asked the District Court to decide the matter and the judge categorically rejected the municipality’s claims, repealing all the indictments, 20 in number, while making harsh accusations against the municipal prosecutors.

In the verdict, the judge noted the conduct of the municipality as “unreasonable behavior of the authority, which severely violates the principle of decency in the operation of the authority and the principles of justice in the exercise of criminal authority” and “constitutes a defect which, in the circumstances of the case, goes to the root of the matter and established an independent cause for the cancelation of the indictments”.

It should be noted that the legal department of the Arad Municipality invested NIS 297,000 in legal proceedings conducted in no less than 57 hearings held in various courts throughout the country, in order to convict the families who wanted to save a little on gas costs.

A source in the Chassidus is quoted telling Kikar Shabbos News he wanted to draw the attention of the residents ahead of the upcoming elections, in which Mayor (Yesh Atid) Nissan Ben-Chamu invests municipal resources, tax funds. “Instead of improving the city, the mayor prefers to spend a lot of money in an obsessive and useless persecution against the Gerre Chassidim”.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)