Housing minister attends contractor-funded Mimouna party
Uri Ariel is guest of honor at event linked to his party and paid for by construction firm
Housing Minister Uri Ariel was the guest of honor at a traditional post-Passover Mimouna celebration given by the National Union political faction — a part of the larger right-wing Jewish Home party in the Knesset — in Rehovot’s Kiryat Moshe neighborhood on Saturday night.
While National Union’s logo appeared on invitations to the event, the Haaretz daily reported, the party failed to mention the sponsor of the evening: the real estate company Ainav, which handles urban renewal contracts in the Rehovot area.
As housing minister, Ariel carries significant influence in government construction tenders. Ariel chairs both the National Union faction and the Tekuma political party that makes up a majority of the faction’s members. Invitations to the Mimouna event sponsored by Ainav were sent to all members of the Tekuma Central Committee.
Rehovot city councilman Amitai Cohen, who is also a member of Tekuma’s Central Committee, welcomed Ariel to the celebration by openly acknowledging the ties between Ainav and the housing minister. “The minister [Ariel] has taken it upon himself to lead a project here in the neighborhood, together with the Ainav company and its CEO, Efi [Katz]…. We hope that the minister will continue to strengthen us and help our neighborhood.”
Most of Kiryat Moshe’s residents are immigrants from Ethiopia.
Last year, contractors working on tenders connected to the national master plan for the reinforcement of existing buildings (known by the Hebrew acronym Tama 38) in Rehovot’s Kiryat Moshe neighborhood received NIS 60,000 ($15,000) from the Housing Ministry for each apartment they renovated.
The Housing Ministry also awarded a comprehensive urban renewal project to Rehovot’s municipality and will fund part of the project’s costs.
A spokesman from Housing Minister Uri Ariel’s office told Haaretz that “Minister Ariel has supported the Ethiopian community in Israel and the residents of the Kiryat Moshe neighborhood in Rehovot, in particular, for many years. He was invited to the Mimouna celebration as the guest of honor about a month ago. The celebration is an event of the neighborhood, where a significant urban renewal project is under way. The minister was not involved in the specifics of the event’s production, of which the municipality was in charge. The minister attended the celebration briefly in the evening and then left for other Mimouna events.”