The Tel Aviv District Court ruled Sunday that the state's position on an appeal in the matter of assets belonging to the Waqf, the Muslim religious trust, will be held behind closed doors, without the presence of the appellants, because the information revealed might damage Israel's foreign relations. The appeal was submitted by the Jaffa Association for Human Rights and four activists in the Muslim community in Jaffa, against the Custodian for Absentee Property. It demands that the Custodian provide them with an exact list of Waqf property in Tel Aviv-Jaffa and the rest of the country, and incomes from that property. (Yigal Hai)
Jewish Agency Chairman Ze'ev Bielski announced yesterday that the agency, together with the government, would erase the debts of a number of communities near the Gaza Strip, some NIS 27 million. The funds were given as loans for community development. Haim Yellin, chair of the Eshkol Regional Council, who received a phone call from Bielski telling him of the decision, said: "I'm glad the government and the Jewish Agency have begun to recognize the distress of the communities around Gaza, and that we can't deal with security threats, community development and debts." (Fadi Eyadat)
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Civil Administration inspectors filed a police complaint yesterday that they were attacked by a group of right-wing teens near the outpost of Migron in Samaria. When the inspectors arrived at the site yesterday to deliver a demolition order for illegal buildings, they said they saw a group of teens attempting to build a structure. The teens allegedly called the inspectors Nazis, some wrote numbers on their arms as if to compare themselves to Holocaust victims, and punctured the tires of the inspectors' vehicles. The inspectors snapped photographs of about 15 of the teens, which they gave to police. (Yuval Azloulay)
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