Supreme Court Justice Ofer Grosskopf issued a temporary injunction blocking the transfer of tens of millions of shekels from the GEFEN program budget to the Shas party’s educational network in response to a petition filed by the radical-left Hadash movement.

The move follows the Court’s dramatic ruling on Wednesday evening blocking the transfer of about one billion shekels to Chareidi schools that had passed all government approvals.

Shas was relying on the GEFEN funds after it failed to meet the conditions of the New Horizon budget criteria, as determined by Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara.

In an attempt to bypass Baharav-Miara’s obsessive battle against the Chareidi sector, an agreement was reached between Shas and Education Minister Yoav Kisch to transfer the funds via the GEFEN program—a budgeting system within the Education Ministry that grants flexible budgets to schools, granting managerial autonomy to principals and local authorities according to their students’ needs.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)