The parents of missing girl Haymanot Kasau asked the Jerusalem District Court on Monday to urgently hear their challenge to the municipality’s refusal to allow them to establish a month-long protest camp near the Prime Minister’s Office.
Haymanot was nine when she disappeared from the absorption center where her family lived in Safed on February 25, 2024. She was last recorded that evening distributing local-election leaflets with friends near the center. Despite extensive searches involving police, rescue units, dogs, and volunteers, no trace of her has been found.
More than two and a half years later, the police investigation remains open. The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) is providing limited assistance and the family says it still has no answer to the most basic question: What happened to their daughter?
The proposed Jerusalem camp is intended to press the government to place the investigation under full Shin Bet responsibility and keep Haymanot’s disappearance before the public. The family argues that the police-led investigation has failed to produce results and that the security agency should use its broader intelligence capabilities to try to locate her.
Jerusalem rejected the camp without identifying any concrete danger or obstruction specific to the family’s plan.
Court cited sanitation, safety concerns in its refusal
In its September 16 decision, the municipality expressed sympathy for the family but said experience showed that tents erected for extended periods generally create sanitation, safety, and accessibility problems, and restrict the public’s equal use of shared space.
The refusal instead relied on the difficulties such encampments cause “by their nature, in most if not all cases,” and on general municipal policy. It did not explain why conditions could not be imposed to address those concerns or why this camp could not be approved in an area where other protest structures have operated.
Tesfaye and Banchi Kasau, represented by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), argue that generalized concerns cannot justify an outright refusal, particularly without an individual assessment of the location and proposed arrangements.
The family sought permission to establish the camp from September 23 through October 22 at the intersection of Zusman and Kaplan streets, near the Prime Minister’s Office and Jerusalem’s government complex.
Their formal request followed several attempts beginning in July to obtain permission for a camp near the Supreme Court, the Knesset, and the prime minister’s official residence. The petition says the family was turned away even when it proposed using existing protest sites or infrastructure.
Jerusalem municipality accuses protesters of taking law into their own hands
ACRI submitted a formal application on September 15. The city rejected it the following day, and the family petitioned the Jerusalem District Court, sitting as the Court for Administrative Affairs, on September 17.
The municipality asked the court on Sunday to dismiss the case after the family erected a Sukkot booth in Agranat Square, beside an existing protest camp operated by the Gvura Forum.
It accused the petitioners of creating facts on the ground while proceedings were pending, arguing that the booth amounted to taking the law into their own hands and removed the need for the remedy they had requested.
The family responded Monday that the Sukkot booth and the proposed camp were not the same. They had not erected the month-long encampment requested in the petition, their lawyers said, and would dismantle the booth when the holiday ended, as families across Jerusalem do.
The family said the city had identified no actual harm caused by the Sukkot booth and could not use an offer of alternative publicity to dictate how they protested. They remained willing to meet municipal representatives, but said cultural programming was no substitute for a camp directed at national decision-makers.
The family does not dispute the city’s authority to regulate structures in public spaces. It argues, rather, that the city must assess each protest individually rather than reject a camp on the basis of general concerns.
The petition cites previous Supreme Court rulings and positions submitted by the attorney-general in earlier cases challenging Jerusalem’s protest regulations. Those positions criticized rigid rules that failed to weigh each protest individually and stressed the particular importance of allowing demonstrations near government institutions in the capital.
The city argues that freedom of protest is not absolute and must be balanced against safety, sanitation, accessibility, and the rights of other people using the space. It maintains that a month-long camp involving a continuous family presence is materially different from a short demonstration or ordinary holiday booth.
Deputy Mayor Yossi Havilio visited the family’s booth on Friday. According to the family’s campaign headquarters, he said he would try to help it remain at the site after Sukkot.
“I am very sad and disappointed,” Tesfaye Kasau said. “It seems Haymanot has no place in the priorities of Israel’s capital.”
“We truly no longer know what to do so that people will listen and their ears will not remain closed to Haymanot’s cry,” he added.
The investigation was transferred to the police’s Lahav 433 national crime unit in December 2025. In February, the attorney-general authorized the Shin Bet to assist the police with certain investigative measures on an exceptional basis.
President Isaac Herzog said in August that the agency had begun assisting, and the Shin Bet subsequently confirmed that it was conducting operations in support of the police-led investigation. The family is demanding a full transfer of responsibility, arguing that limited assistance has not produced answers.
After a meeting with Kasau earlier this month, police said that the investigation remained a top priority and that all necessary steps were being taken, but that it could not disclose its investigative actions.
A national publicity campaign was launched in June, accompanied by a NIS 1 million reward for information leading to Haymanot. No publicly confirmed breakthrough has followed.
Judge Einat Avman-Muller has not dismissed the petition or ruled on whether the city must authorize the camp. The case remains pending, and the family is seeking an urgent hearing.