Before the current war, some 200,000 Palestinian workers were employed throughout the Jewish state, including 30,000 in Judea and Samaria.
By JNS
The Ariel Local Affairs Court ruled on Sunday in favor of Mayor Yair Chetboun’s move to bar some Palestinian workers from the Samaria capital following the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist massacre.
The ruling in the case brought by several business owners marked the first time a court affirmed the authority of local Judea and Samaria leaders to restrict the entry of Palestinians, Israel Hayom reported.
Previous court battles on the issue often ended in settlement deals that saw the army oversee the approval of workers’ entry. In some cases, courts decided that local officials did not have the right to block Palestinians from entering if the Israel Defense Forces approved their employment.
“A court must be careful not to substitute its own judgment for that of the local authority, which is legally empowered and accountable to its voters on public safety matters,” Judge Amir Dahan wrote in the ruling.
“The objective of ensuring the safety of the residents is a legitimate and worthy one, especially in light of the circumstances after Oct. 7, 2023,” the judge wrote. “The court found, based on the evidence presented, that the municipality’s decision was made for these purposes and not for improper ones.”
Chetboun in a statement cited by Israel Hayom on Sunday, said, “Justice and common sense have prevailed. The court has sent a clear and unequivocal message: the residents’ security is nonnegotiable.
“I fully understand challenges facing business owners in the city, and I want to make it absolutely clear: I am not at war with them,” he said.
“We’ll join hands with business owners and create innovative solutions wherever needed, strengthen Hebrew labor and continue working with government ministries to bring in foreign workers,” added Chetboun.
While the military banned Palestinians from working in Jewish towns throughout Judea and Samaria in the months following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fox, the then head of IDF Central Command, lifted most of the access restrictions in late 2023.
Before the current war, some 200,000 Palestinian workers were employed throughout the Jewish state, including 30,000 in Judea and Samaria.
In Ariel, Chetboun barred Palestinian laborers from returning to their employment in businesses throughout the city, though construction workers still enter daily to advance the building of new apartments.
Proposals to readmit Palestinian Authority workers to Jewish communities were met with dismay by many. A survey taken last year in Eli, a town of some 4,500 inhabitants in the Binyamin region of southern Samaria, showed that 82% of residents opposed this, regardless of added security measures.
Two polls in late 2023 found that some two-thirds of Arabs in Judea and Samaria support the Oct. 7 massacre, in which around 6,000 Hamas-led terrorists broke through the Gaza border, murdered some 1,200 people, wounded thousands more and took more than 250 captive.
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