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World Jewish News
J'lem parking lot to be shut on Shabbat
12.06.2009
In an effort to prevent haredi violence, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat has accepted a request made by the city's police chief to close the newly opened municipal parking lot for the next two Saturdays so an alternative site can be found within two weeks, police and the city said Friday.
Barkat's spokesman Evyatar Elad said that the parking lot would be repoened in two weeks if no solution to the lack of parking in the city on the weekends could be found by then.
Following the announcement, Rabbis from Eda Haredit, the ultra-orthodox anti-Zionist sect which was prominent in protests last week, called off a protest-prayer which was planned to take place on Friday evening.
The developments came a week after thousands of haredim rioted in central Jerusalem over the opening of the city hall parking lot on Saturdays, and less than 24 hours before a second weekend of planned protests.
The clash over the parking lot, which has been operated on Saturdays by a non-Jew in keeping with Jewish religious law, has emerged as the first major challenge for Barkat in treading through the delicate fabric of Jerusalem's diverse populations since he was elected in November.
"If they want war, there will be war," Yoel Kraus, the operations officer of Eda Haredit, which organized last week's massive protest, said earlier Thursday, before Franco's proposal. "We are ready to keep this up for at least half a year."
Kraus said this weekend's planned protests would begin on Friday evening, and would spread to intersections in haredi neighborhoods on Saturday.
A counterprotest is planned for Friday afternoon outside city hall, the site of the parking lot in question.
A meeting at midnight on Wednesday between Barkat and several haredi Rabbis who are not affiliated with the Eda Haredit failed to resolve the dispute, Barkat spokesman Evyatar Elad said on Thursday.
The meeting with five members of the Committee for the Sanctity of the Shabbat discussed principles and not specifics, Elad said.
Barkat said this week that he was determined to keep the lot open since it did not desecrate the Sabbath and met an urgent need.
The mayor would be willing to look into opening an alternate parking lot instead of the municipal garage, his spokesman said.
The offer, however, has been rejected by the Eda Haredit as unacceptable, calling into question how an alternate site could be found to resolve the dispute within two weeks.
The lot was opened in agreement with Barkat's coalition partners, including haredi city councilmen, to accommodate weekend visitors to the capital who were illegally parking on main thoroughfares near the Old City.
The Kraus said the haredi approval of the lot's opening had actually made things worse.
The haredi city councilors had opposed earlier municipal plans to open a private lot opposite the Old City that police had preferred.
"It doesn't matter where the desecration of the Sabbath is - two meters from Mea She'arim or two meters from the Western Wall," the Eda Haredit official said.
Analysts say the fringe organization used the dispute to pounce on the secular mayor, a self-made hi-tech millionaire who is seen as a political novice.
Barkat conceded this week that he was surprised by Saturday's violent demonstration after the issue had been worked out in advance.
The haredi-secular dispute brought back memories of months-long violence in the '90s over Sabbath traffic on Rehov Bar-Ilan, a major city thoroughfare that cuts through haredi neighborhoods to get to secular northern areas.
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS
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