The Ministerial Committee for Legislation approved Sunday a bill proposed by MK Bezalel Smotrich (Jewish Home) and other MKs from the coalition which would expand the powers of administrative courts in Judea and Samaria.
According to the proposal, the Administrative Affairs Courts will also be authorized to hear petitions against "the decision of an authority from the Judea and Samaria region, including the Civil Administration."
The explanatory notes to the bill state that "the purpose of enacting the Courts for Administrative Affairs Law, 5760-2000, is to reduce the burden on the Supreme Court, to allow citizens to have [increased] access on administrative matters, and to allow [for the creation of] another appeals court. To date, this law has not been applied to the decisions of the regional authorities in Judea and Samaria. As a result, many petitions were filed in the Supreme Court. The result was discrimination against residents of the territories, whose access to the courts was impaired, both because the first petition was less accessible to them and because of the absence of an appeals court in administrative petitions."
The initiator of the proposal, MK Smotrich, said that "this is another step in the process of normalization of settlement in Judea and Samaria, a goal that we set for ourselves at the beginning of the term. There is no reason in the world that the residents of Judea and Samaria have to go to the High Court of Justice for everything, and hearings in the Supreme Court are also more complex and expensive."
The bill will be put to a vote on Wednesday in a preliminary reading in the Knesset plenum and will be combined with a government bill that Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked intends to promote.