JERUSALEM - The upcoming Gay Pride Parade will take place on Friday in Jerusalem as scheduled, it was decided on Tuesday.

Following a meeting between police and the organizers of the parade, Jerusalem's Open House, the sides agreed that the parade would begin at 11 a.m. and end at 3 p.m. Marchers will head from Kaplan St., through the government compound (the street connecting the Knesset and the Prime Minister's Office), to the stadium at Hebrew University's Givat Ram campus, where a rally will be held.

The only remaining obstacle to the parade was a series of petitions filed with the High Court by various groups, as well as one submitted earlier Tuesday by Minister of Industry, Trade and Labor Eli Yishai (Shas).

"The Gay Pride Parade will ignite the entire Middle East," Yishai said.

The Shas chairman urged the court to prevent the parade from going ahead, calling it a "march of abomination."

The court was set to discuss the petition on Wednesday morning.

Meanwhile, Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski also called for a cancellation of the parade.

"This is a time to prove real tolerance and maturity and to cancel the march in the heart of Jerusalem for the benefit of all of us," said the mayor, adding that a cancellation would "renew the strength, recognition, understanding and togetherness which encompass the city."

Lupolianski said that out of a cancellation of the parade, Jerusalem residents would emerge "stronger and experience the goodness of Jerusalem together." Similarly, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Monday said that the gay parade this year, unlike in the past, was "a provocative act," and if the police recommend that it be cancelled, then it should.

In an interview with Channel 2 talk show host Yair Lapid, he said that a gay parade had taken place when he served as mayor of Jerusalem, but at the time "it was not provocative."

He asserted that although the gay community had a democratic right to march, the organizers this year were presenting the parade "as a provocative act" and that haredim "have the democratic right to oppose the parade, exactly like they are doing."

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When put on the spot by Lapid, who related the vehement statements and violent actions taken by some members of the haredi community, Olmert backed down somewhat, but repeated that the right itself to oppose the parade is "legitimate."

He said that if the police's view was that they could not guarantee the safety of the parade, then "their view should be accepted." The High Court of Justice on Monday ordered the state to present its alternative plan for the parade's route through Jerusalem by 4 p.m. on Tuesday.

Nevertheless, police in the capital arrested 40 haredim who took part in the violent protests, which were also reported for the first time in the predominantly secular neighborhood of Rehavia. In Ramot, a driver was moderately injured after rioters pushed a large burning dumpster into a main thoroughfare.

Meanwhile, Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch, Deputy President Eliezer Rivlin and Justice Ayala Procaccia presided over the hearing on three petitions against the parade.

The petitioners, including haredi leader Yehuda Meshi-Zahav and activists Baruch Marzel and Itamar Ben-Gvir, demanded that the parade be cancelled because it could cause bloodshed, as it offended so many residents of the city.

Opponents of the parade had threatened to hold violent protests if the parade is held, and such protests could endanger the lives of the protesters, the marchers and the security forces, the petitioners wrote.

Attorney Yoram Sheftel, who is representing the anti-parade petitioners, told The Jewish Press what his argument before the High Court would consist of. "If the court plans to rule on this issue according to the criteria that it itself determined," he said, "namely, that the right to demonstrate and the right to march are not 'absolute' rights and cannot be carried out in a case where there is fear that it will become a matter of life or death and will bring to bloodshed, then the Court must rule against the parade.

"[But] in an unprecedented move, going against the High Court rulings, going against the professional advice of the security establishment, the attorney general declared that the parade will take place no matter what. He just said that the parade will not march in its original form but in a much smaller form.

"By going against the High Court and the security establishment, his proposal to hold it in a smaller form becomes illegal. In order to secure this parade the police will have to bring in 12,000 policemen to Jerusalem. This is something that has never happened since the establishment of the state. Never has there been a demonstration that required 12,000 police to guard them.

"I think that everything that the Attorney General has been doing since Sunday evening is not only illegal but goes against the court's ruling pertaining to this specific parade itself.

"When the court agreed that this parade can go through it was based on an agreement between the police, the attorney general's office and the gay community that it will not bring to bloodshed.

"But the security establishment now says explicitly that it will bring to bloodshed and is a danger to life."

(Reporting by JPFS and Avraham Shmuel Lewin, Jewish Press Israel Correspondent.)