Has the Israeli supreme court ever come to a decision that can be seen as pro-Palestine or pro-Arab/anti-Israel/-Jew?

Question

Has the Israeli supreme court ever come to a decision that can be seen as pro-Palestine or pro-Arab/anti-Israel/-Jew?

I have heard proponents of the Palestine/Arab side claim the Israeli supreme court is racist and always favour Jews/Israelis, but my impression from, shallowly, following news etc is that "Israeli nationalists" regularly get upset on the supreme court because it gives verdicts that they consider wrong.

I am no expert on this and the result of a verdict might be up to interpretation. Hence my question.

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Edit: another perspective might be cases where one party has been pro-Israeli/-Jewish and the other party pro-Palestine, both private citizens as well as "associations" or organizations.

Answer 1

Very much so.

1. Last year, the Israeli supreme court struck down a 2017 law having to do with legalization of illegal housing built in previously Palestinian areas (New York Times source).

Here is a quote from that article:

In its 8-to-1 ruling, the high court declared that the 2017 law was lopsidedly unfair, saying it sought to make legal “unlawful acts perpetrated by one specific population” — Jewish settlers — “while harming the rights of another,” the Palestinians.

It called the law an “arrangement which knowingly and unequally hurts only the ownership rights” of the Palestinians...

Now, this law was so incredibly incendiary that it was hit by an injunction shortly after it was passed. As mentioned in the article, it would have been hard to imagine the judiciary not ruling against it, but it remains an example.

2. Another example would be the overturn of a ban which would have made it impossible for Arab parties to partake in Feb. 2009 parliamentary elections (New York Times source). It is noteworthy that this overruled the Central Election Committee's decision and that the vote in the court was unanimous.

3. The restrictions placed on jewish access to the temple mount can also be seen as pro-arab/anti-jew. I believe these restrictions are linked to the 1967 Protection of Holy Places Law. This law actually is an afirmative one, stating that:

The Holy Places shall be protected ... from anything likely to violate the freedom of access of the members of the different religions to the places sacred to them...

However, the Supreme Court ruled in The Temple Mount Faithful v. Tzahi Hanegbi that this right was not absolute and ruled in favor of access restrictions, even those which explicitly differentiate jewish from arab people entering the site (Jewish Center for Public Affairs)

This ruling has survived recent attempts at reversing it, such as one in 2019 to overrule an access restriction on Jews to the temple mount during Jerusalem Day JTA. The court ruled that it was the prerogative of the police to determine access.

Answer 2

As the comments rightfully note, there's always a political force by whose opinion various decisions "can be seen" differently.

For instance, there's a long-lasting political debate over Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
In November 2020, Israel’s Supreme Court struck down a law that had retroactively legalized settlements built on privately owned Palestinian land in the West Bank.

This triggered a negative response from right-wing politicians (highlight mine):

Israel’s ruling Likud party and the country’s right-wing camp have reacted negatively to the court ruling. For the Minister of Settlement Affairs Tzipi Hotoveli, the Supreme Court “declared war on the rights of Jews to settle in the land of Israeli.” In her view, "The best response to the court is annexation and continued construction.”

Answer 3

1. Israel's supreme court has ruled several times against Jewish settlements in Judea & Samaria. Such rulings have lead to destruction of these settlements by the IDF. One example is Amona:

"In December 2014, the Israeli High Court ordered the state to completely evacuate and demolish the settlement within two years".

Earlier, during the Israeli disengagement from Gaza, the Israeli supreme court had rejected an appeal by settlers against destroying their homes.

2. The Israeli supreme court has banned several Jewish extemists from participating in the elections; one of them was Michael Ben Ari. In contrast, no Arab extremist was ever banned from participating. Even when the central election committee decided to ban extremist Arab members, the Israeli supreme court overruled this decision. An example is Azmi Bishara.

3. "Neighbor procedure" was a procedure used by the IDF to capture terrorists hiding in civilian homes. It involved asking neighbors of the terrorist to knock on the door and ask the terrorist to get out, assuming that the terrorist will not shoot his neighbor. In 2005, the Israeli supreme court disallowed the IDF to use this procedure. This was considered an unprecedented intervention of a court in military procedures. Source: Hebrew Wikipedia (sorry, I did not find an English source).