The "Admissions Committees Law" granted small community localities in the Negev and the Galilee (including community neighborhoods that are extensions of kibbutzim and moshavim), the unique and controversial authority to carry out selective admission procedures for new residents. A new law seeks to increase the localities to which the Admissions Committees Law applies to localities with up to 600 plots, rather than 400 families, as well as to expand the geographical areas and settlements over which the Law applies.
On December 29, 2021, ACRI submitted a position paper to the Chair of the Ministerial Committee for Legislation, expressing our opposition to the bill. In the paper, Attorney Gil Gan-Mor argued that there is no justification for upholding an admissions procedure in localities that are predominantly suburban in nature and do not constitute special communal settlements. With respect to human dignity, all citizens of democracies have the right to live wherever they want and subordinating this right to an invasive and intrusive screening process requires considerable justification.
ACRI argued that screening processes based on such broad and vague rationale, including compatibility with community life or the socio-cultural fabric of a locality, constitute a gateway for often covert, arbitrary and unacceptable discrimination, whether carried out consciously or not. Moreover, the very existence of the Admissions Committees, and various other informal screening procedures, create a "chilling effect" that deters many people from even trying to be accepted into hundreds of localities throughout the country. The law should thus be repealed or restricted, rather than expanded. With regard to the settlements, they claimed that the Knesset is not authorized to enact a law that would apply in the Occupied Territories.