The haredi school system will pay a
fine of NIS 10,000 for every day segregation continues. Parents who disobey the court's injunction
will have to pay a fine of NIS 200 per day per parent (a couple
will have to pay NIS 400) until they stop violating it. If the fine does not deter them by month’s
end, the court will consider taking out arrest warrants against them.
The High Court of Justice’s Ultimatum to the Parents in Emanuel
Shmuel Mittelman • Ma’ariv (p. 5)
Translation: Didi Remez • Coteret
Are the ethnic crisis in Emanuel coming to an end? Yesterday, the High Court of Justice gave the Beit Yaakov girls’ school and the parents of the community a last chance to end the segregation between Sephardic and Ashkenazic pupils.
Judges Edmond Levy, Edna Arbel and Hanan Meltzer ruled that the Education Ministry would make a “last ditch attempt” to implement the court’s ruling consensually, which they have avoided doing so far, and would notify the court within a week’s time whether the parties had reached an agreed-upon solution.
More than two weeks ago, the Haredi public received with mixed feelings the news of the compromise that the High Court of Justice had suggested: that the segregation between Ashkenazic and Sephardic pupils at the Beit Yaakov school end for one week. Since then, the Hasidic parents—almost all of them Ashkenazic—have returned their children to the Beit Yaakov school. Nevertheless, school officials continue to run two separate wings, for all intents and purposes.
Yesterday, the judges announced that if school officials did not accept the court’s decision to integrate the pupils, the Haredi private school system would pay, beginning next Tuesday, a fine of NIS 10,000 for every day that segregation persisted.
In addition, the parents of the girls in the Hasidic track who disobey the injunction will also have to pay a fine of NIS 200 per day per parent (a couple will have to pay NIS 400) until they stop violating the injunction. The judges warned parents that if the fine did not deter them by month’s end, they would consider taking out arrest warrants against them.
The judges wrote, “Although the physical signs of segregation between the two wings of the school that divided the pupils have been removed, the essential segregation remains in place, and the Haredi private school system and the girls’ parents are seen as doing everything possible in order to make sure that the order is not carried out. Therefore, we see that there is no alternative to imposing sanctions.”