Attorney General Dr. Avichai Mandelblit, believes that a contractor who appeals to the general public for the purpose of marketing apartments built on state land is obligated to act with equality and cannot refuse to sell an apartment to a couple only because of their ethnicity.

The position of the Attorney General was submitted to the Supreme Court, in the framework of an application for appeal filed by the construction company Mei Tal Engineering and Services, for its obligation to pay compensation to spouses from the Arab sector due to their discrimination after refusing to sell them an apartment in Pisgat Ze’ev in Jerusalem.

The contractor, Mei Tal Engineering and Services, builds and markets apartments throughout the country, including apartments under the “Tal Platinum” project in Jerusalem’s Pisgat Ze’ev neighborhood. The plaintiffs are a couple, originally residents of the north who have lived in Jerusalem in recent years and who wanted to purchase an apartment in the city that is suitable for their disabled son, but they claim that the construction company Mei Tal, refused to sell the apartment to them only because of their origin.

The Magistrate’s Court accepted the couple’s claim that Mei Tal refused to sell them a residential apartment, but because they are Arab and ruled in their favor, ordering compensation without proof of damage at a rate of NIS 20,000, after determining that the Prohibition of Discrimination in Products, Services and Entry to Places Law Entertainment and Public Places also applies to the sale of real estate. The Jerusalem District Court rejected the company’s appeal of the ruling, after supporting its arguments, and it filed an application for permission to appeal to the Supreme Court, which requested the attorney general’s position on the issue.

The main question placed before the Supreme Court is whether a private construction company that offers to sell apartments to the general public and refuses to sell an apartment to spouses who apply to it only because of their affiliation to the Arab sector must pay compensation to the couple who approached it.

In the Ka’adan case, the state was under an obligation to act equally even when allocating land to the Jewish Agency, which in turn adopted a discriminatory policy. In the same matter, the question was not examined whether the mere acceptance of a right to state land imposes on a non-discriminatory policy on the third party, which is required to build and market the apartments that will be built for the general public.

The position of the Attorney General must be answered in the affirmative. This obligation, whether it is explicitly expressed in the wording of the contract or not, is an inseparable part of the nature of the state’s land and the debts accompanying it. Just as the state is not entitled to discriminate in the allocation of land, so too a third party that has won public land so that it can build and market the apartments to the general public is not entitled to discriminate in the sale of the apartments it has built.

The Attorney General believes that without deciding whether the Prohibition of Discrimination in Products and Services Law also applies to land, the obligation imposed on the construction company to act in equality in the marketing of apartments to the public can be read with due caution, both by virtue of the tender and the contracts it has signed with the Israel Land Authority and the Ministry of Construction and Housing. The nature of the land that was marketed to the construction company for the purpose of selling it to the general public, and by virtue of the obligation of good faith in negotiations. According to the Mandelblit, the construction company owes the duty of equality to the sale and marketing of state land, and its obligations can be derived from the contractual context of its activity without the need to discuss these obligations in the tortious context.

Therefore, the Attorney General’s position, which was filed by attorney Limor Peled of the Civil Department of the State Attorney’s Office, is that the conduct of the Mei Tal construction company is discriminatory and cannot be permitted, as stated, whether or not the law prohibits discrimination.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)