Israel High Court Quashes Emergency Housing Plans

The Israeli Supreme Court today quashed the emergency powers granted to Housing Minister Ariel Sharon for a crash building program to house a wave of Soviet Jewish immigrants.

Israel’s new right-wing government gave Sharon the right July 1 to circumvent existing rules in order to rush construction of 3,000 new apartments and prepare the groundwork for another 8,000.

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of parliamentarian Avraham Poraz of the centrist Shinui party, who charged that Sharon’s emergency powers were unreasonable and illegal.

“It was possible to build houses at all the sites that Minister Sharon wanted to build according to the existing law,” Poraz told Army radio after the ruling.

“In fact these emergency measures were intended to create an atmosphere of public hysteria, an atmosphere of distress.”

Sharon, a hard-liner who orchestrated Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, received broad powers in the new government to handle the immigration of hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews.

In a second blow to Sharon’s ambitious plans to cope with Soviet immigration, Tourism Minister Gideon Patt attacked his emergency plan announced Sunday to house immigrants in hotels.

“Three-, four- and five-star hotels will not become absorption centers,” Patt told reporters. “I won’t allow it.”

Pressure on the government to solve the housing crisis grows daily as the number of homeless Israelis swells and dozens of tent cities spring up across the country.

The growing demand for space has forced up rents, driving many young couples and poor families out of their apartments.