State Comptroller report: Regavim using state funds to fight state in High Court
Shapira cites improper overlap of personnel between NGO and Binyamin Regional Council
The right-wing NGO Regavim is using millions of state funds to file petitions against the government in the High Court of Justice, the State Comptroller revealed in a special report on local government issues.
On Tuesday, Regavim said it is “a major force in protecting and preserving Israel’s State land, combating illegal construction throughout Israel, and defending Israel’s natural resources against misuse and abuse.”
Most of its legal actions are filed against alleged illegal construction by Palestinians in the West Bank, Beduins in the South and by east Jerusalem Arabs or against the state for an alleged failure to evict them.
In addition, Joseph Shapira said there is an improper overlap of personnel between Regavim and the Binyamin Regional Council, who decides which NGOs are awarded funds and has been awarding Regavim millions.
The report also cites a similar problematic personnel overlap between the council and, Horizon for Settlement, another NGO that the council has awarded significant funds to.
Though not explicitly in the report, there have been media implications that a new bill, in which Bezalel Smotrich has proposed to trim the wings of the comptroller, was timed as payback for Shapira going after Regavim.
The Bayit Yehudi MK helped found the NGO, though he is no longer formally involved.
Neither Regavim nor Horizon for Settlement are actually named as such in the report, referred to instead as NGO A and NGO B, but the descriptions of their activities in the report “outed” the organizations and Regavim have pushed back hard against the report’s conclusions.
More specifically regarding the NGOs, the comptroller wrote that the council had stacked the process for awarding funds in favor of Regavim by tailoring its conditions for receiving funds to the NGO’s work.
For example, the report said the council set conditions for receiving funds including: “Corporate bodies which act to preserve land” and that “take part in no fewer than 15 legal actions connected to this issue.”
In Regavim’s requests to the council for funds from 2015 to 2016, it “attached a list of 15 petitions to the High Court of Justice, all of which were filed by the NGO against the State. As such, the council in practice set filing petitions against the State as a condition for receipt of funds.”
Further, the report said, “This raised difficulties since the state funds 62% to 67% of the council’s budget,” with Regavim receiving an average of NIS 460,00 each year from the council from 2006 to 2012.
Regarding the overlapping of personnel, the council’s head, Avi Roeh, as well as a key aide, were among the founders of Horizon for Settlement, and the aide was the head of Regavim from January 2010, said the report.
Shapira wrote that “the involvement of the council head and his aide in the two NGOs strengthens the suspicion that the conditions for funding set by the council were tailored to ensure that those specific NGOs would get the funding.”
The report said that Roeh’s participation in both the council and an NGO it funded was a clear violation of conflict of interest principles.
Regavim responded to the comptroller’s report with a detailed statement:
“While the Tel Aviv Municipality spends hundreds of thousands of shekels of taxpayers’ money each year funding radical, anti-Zionist organizations… We at Regavim take pride in the fact that local authorities in Judea and Samaria actively promote the Zionist ideal of protecting State lands,” it said.
Moreover, it said, “the insinuation that there is some improper connection between the support of the Binyamin Local Authority and the fact that Regavim’s director-general served in the past as the assistant to the mayor is unfounded and indefensible.”
In addition, Regavim wrote that its investment in good governance “makes it only natural” that it would try to get the courts to compel the state to act where it has “been negligent” in carrying out its duties, noting that the High Court had recently complimented Regavim for a motion “against illegal construction and seizure of land.”
Likewise, in the report the council rejected the criticism, saying that the NGOs in question simply were engaged in missions which were important to the council.
Smotrich called the implications that his new bill was intended to restrict aspects of the comptroller’s powers, “A preposterous conspiracy.”
State Control Committee chairwoman MK Shelly Yacimovich (Zionist Union), Meretz MK Mossi Raz and others came to the comptroller’s defense and slammed Smotrich.