A coalition of human rights organizations – Kav LaOved – Workers’ Hotline, Adalah, and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) – filed a petition to the Israeli Supreme Court demanding the cancellation of the “Jordan Valley Regulation,” published by the Israeli Justice Ministry on 2 August 2016. The regulation obligates labor court judges to order non-Israeli residents, such as migrant laborers and asylum seekers in Israel , to deposit a financial guarantee at the commencement of a lawsuit against Israeli employers, that is intended to cover the employer’s court costs. The regulation would affect most migrant laborers and asylum seekers who work in Israel and in Israeli settlements in the West Bank, as well as West Bank Palestinian residents who work on Israeli-owned farms in the Jordan Valley. These groups, collectively, constitute the weakest labor sector in Israel and the occupied territories.
In their petition, the human rights organizations argue that Justice Minister Shaked’s decision to publish the regulation was politically motivated. Media reports indicate that the purpose of the regulation is to strike out at Palestinian employees who, according to Shaked, have a tendency to appeal to Israeli labor courts in order to defend their rights in the workplace. According to media reports, the regulation is intended “to prevent a legal intifada of lawsuits.” The petitioning organizations note that this is a tendentious political term used to describe a negligible number of routine lawsuits filed by Palestinian agricultural laborers in Jordan Valley settlements in response to violations of their labor rights by Israeli employers.
The petition against Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked and Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit was filed jointly by Michal Tadjer of Kav LaOved (Worker’s Hotline); Sawsan Zaher of Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel; and Oded Feller and Roni Pelli of The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI).
Taken from NGOs Press Release