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January 3, 2007, CNS News: People living in the southern Israeli town of Sderot, hard hit by Palestinian rocket fire, say they should not have to pay taxes to a government that is not defending them.
Julie Stahl
January 3, 2007
They have petitioned the Tel Aviv District, asking that they not be required to pay taxes.
Southern Israeli communities have been under Palestinian rocket fire from the Gaza Strip for at least four years.
Some 1,110 rockets were launched at southern Israeli communities during 2006, the army said on Wednesday. Hundreds of those rockets crashed into Sderot, killing a few people, causing extensive damage and disrupting daily life.
Initially, Hamas was the only group that launched rockets at Israel but for the last year or so, Islamic Jihad has claimed responsibility, although some critics say all the groups act in cooperation with one another when it comes to terrorism.
Attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner filed what she said was an unprecedented appeal for 50 residents of Sderot earlier this week.
"The lawsuit draws a connection between the historic obligation of a citizen to pay taxes to the government and the duty of the state to militarily defend the lives of the taxpaying citizen from foreign aggressors," said Darshan-Leitner, director of Shurat HaDin, a Jewish legal rights center.
In any state, the citizens are obligated to carry out civil duties in exchange for governmental protection of their rights -- including physical safety, said Darshan Leitner.
The plaintiffs want the court to declare that they are exempt from paying taxes "in light of the State's refusal to provide adequate military protection to their community," she said.
They claim that the government's "policy of restraint" against the ongoing rocket attacks is endangering their families and encouraging an escalation in terrorist attacks. Until Sderot is given the same protection as other cities in Israel, they believe they should not have to pay taxes, she said.
In addition, the Sderot residents want a rebate for all the taxes they have paid since June 2004, when two residents of the city, including a child, became the first killed in a rocket attack.
"From this date, the State of Israel was on notice that the Kassam rockets began to seriously endanger the lives of the Sderot residents and nevertheless refused to provide the appropriate military response to the terrorists," the petition says.
Israeli government officials have said that there is no way to stop the rocket fire completely but that the goal of the government is to bring it to a bearable level. It is not clear what level of rocket attacks the residents of the city should be expected to withstand.
During the summer, Israel re-entered the Gaza Strip in an attempt to stop the rockets, but it did not halt the firing entirely.
Since Israel and the Palestinians declared a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip at the end of November, Palestinians have launched some 70 rockets at Israel.
From the start of the "ceasefire" the Israeli government exercised what it called a "policy of restraint" not responding at all to the attacks. But following a rocket attack last week, in which two teenagers in Sderot were injured, one of them critically, the government said it would target rocket-launching squads but not launch a major ground offensive.
Military officials have been quoted as saying that the only way to halt the rocket fire is to launch a ground operation in the northern Gaza Strip.
Military experts say the only way to stop the massive military build-up by terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip is to launch a full-scale military operation there to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure and stop the smuggling of weapons and explosives into the Gaza Strip from Egypt as well as halt the rocket attacks.
But they also say that until Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is ready to do so, there is no way to stop the rocket fire.
Darshan-Leitner charged that the Israeli government has made an "immoral decision" to neglect the security of southern Israeli residents for the sake of smooth diplomatic relations with the U.S. and Europe.
Israel has been under enormous international pressure for the last few months to make gestures to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in order to bolster him in his power struggle against the Hamas-led government, which openly calls for Israel's destruction.
Darshan-Leitner said she believes she can win her case if the courts seriously consider the issue and take a courageous stand on the matter.
"The State's first obligation must be to safeguard its citizens and to utilize all its military might to destroy the terrorists firing rockets from Gaza," she said As long as the State as Sderot residents to "fend for themselves" they should not be obligated to pay taxes, she added. |
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