Petitioners urge High Court to unfreeze urgent funding for authorities in Israel's North, South

Petitioners Hiddush and MK Naama Lazimi have requested the High Court to unfreeze urgent government funding for local authorities in Israel's North and South, while maintaining the freeze on other coalition and sectoral funding. This request follows the court's initial freeze on hundreds of millions of shekels approved by the Knesset Finance Committee during the election recess. The Knesset argues that the petitioners' willingness to differentiate between urgent and other funding weakens their original claim that the August 4 Finance Committee meeting was unlawful, and has asked the court to dismiss the petition and lift the freeze entirely. While civil emergency expenditures were initially excluded and NIS 78 million for the Religious Services Ministry has been released, other Education Ministry and National Missions Ministry transfers remain frozen.