The environmental advocacy group Adam Teva V’Din and Knesset member Yorai Lahav-Hertzano filed a petition to the Excessive Courtroom on Monday demanding enforcement of a January determination to award inexperienced teams NIS 11 million ($3.24 million), which the Environmental Safety Minister, Idit Silman, has didn’t honor.
The board of the Cleanup Fund, an impartial statutory physique, awarded the sum.
The Environmental Safety Ministry below Silman has claimed the choice won’t be carried out due to “budgetary constraints,” a cause Adam Teva V’Din fees is “groundless and legally unfounded.”
The petition states, “The place of the related regulatory authorities makes it clear unequivocally that there is no such thing as a budgetary limitation for the implementation of the fund administration’s determination and that the mandatory funds exists and is absolutely obtainable.”
Bar Rozov, head of Adam Teva’s authorized division, defined: “The Cleanup Fund is managed as a separate, devoted funds, by an impartial statutory physique. (That is) a construction designed to make sure that public funds are managed in skilled, clear arms, and impartial of adjusting political concerns. This isn’t Minister Silman’s ‘pocket cash,’ however cash that’s supposed for use for environmental functions for which it was designated. The minister and her workplace don’t have any authority to deviate from a sound and binding determination of the fund’s administration; their position is only govt, they usually lack discretion.”
The Cleanup Fund, established in 1984 and financed by sources akin to landfill charges and plastic bag levies, is used to take care of the nation’s cleanliness, for instance, by stopping the unlawful remedy or dumping of waste, selling recycling, and retaining trash off seashores.
Individuals sit by the surf at a seaside in Tel Aviv on June 18, 2025. (Photograph by AHMAD GHARABLI / AFP)
Money left over by the top of every yr is distributed wholly or partially to assist fund environmental organizations the next yr.
Minutes of a Cleanup Fund assembly on January 21 present that the board accepted NIS 11 million (down from NIS 14 million, or $4.1 million, in 2024) in grants for inexperienced organizations, for actions akin to seminars and conferences, worker and volunteer coaching, curriculum growth, and web site growth.
Nonetheless, 4 months later, on Could 15, the teams obtained an electronic mail from the Environmental Safety Ministry saying it might not subject a name for grant proposals this yr “because of funds constraints.”
On June 6, the ministry’s deputy director normal for Planning Affairs, Stilian Gelberg, informed a Knesset Inside Affairs and Environmental Safety Committee assembly that the ministry had anticipated to fund the inexperienced organizations from a distinct supply, which was by no means transferred, and that it wanted to vary its priorities to make sure money for core points.
Contradicting him, the Finance Ministry’s Ido Mor acknowledged to the committee that there was “no budgetary subject right here. The choice of the Cleanup Fund to approve a sum of NIS 11 million isn’t the ministry’s pocket cash,” he stated. He defined that the fund’s administration was independently chargeable for deciding the place to allocate funds, including that there had been no cuts within the ministry’s funds since January. “There are plans, however no binding determination has been made. And there was no dialogue on reprioritizing the funds,” he stated.
Neither Environmental Safety Minister Idit Silman nor her director normal, Rami Rozen, attended the committee assembly.
MK Yorai Lahav-Hertzanu attends a Yesh Atid faction assembly on the Knesset in Jerusalem, April 15, 2024. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)
Knesset Environmental Foyer chairman Lahav-Hertzano (Yesh Atid) accused Silman of being “towards the surroundings.”
He went on, “Silman is stifling environmental organizations and harming the general public. As an alternative of combating air pollution, she is combating those that are defending us from it. With out authority and opposite to the regulation, she is canceling a choice…. simply to garner extra votes within the Likud primaries.”
A number of posts on a Likud get together WhatsApp group earlier this yr congratulated the minister for halting the move of the NIS 11 million, describing the inexperienced teams as “radical left-wing organizations.” One message learn, “Residents’ tax cash will now not be used as a secret supply for excessive political exercise.”
In petitioning the court docket, Adam Teva V’Din additionally represented Life and Atmosphere, the umbrella group for the nation’s inexperienced nonprofits.
