Religious Services Ministry director-general Oded Flus informed the head of the Givat Ze'ev municipality,Yossi Avrahami that the Religious Services Ministry has pledged to donate 5.2 million shekels ($1.34 million) towards the construction of a new synagogue in place of an older synagogue which had been ordered to be destroyed by the High Court. The amount of money was determined in an agreement by then-Cabinet Secretary Avichai Mandleblit, who now serves as Attorney General. The old synagogue, which has been in use for over 20 years, was slated to be demolished after a far-left group filed a petition with the High Court, claiming that the structure had been build on privately-owned Palestinian Arab land. The High Court ruled that the community did not have the right to construct the Synagogue on the land in question, and said "nothing has changed" after the community produced documents showing that they did indeed own the land. Construction of the new Synagogue is expected to begin in the coming months.
