The Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality on Wednesday filed a petition with the High Court of Justice against Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz’s decision not to carry out Shabbat construction work on the Yehudit pedestrians’ bridge over the Ayalon highway. The petition includes a request for an interim injunction suspending the decision of the Transport Minister to delay or terminate the work, And to compel Netivei Ayalon (Ayalon Highway) to continue the work as planned until the court issues its ruling.
The municipality demanded that work on the bridge be carried out on Shabbat, arguing that the Transport Minister’s decision to halt the work was illegal, since he is not authorized to give orders to the Netivei Ayalon Company, including whether or not it should work on Shabbat. The petition cites the explicit opinion of the legal adviser of the Transport Ministry, which was approved by the attorney general about a year ago.
The Tel Aviv-Jaffa Municipality reported that the petition was filed since “despite repeated requests for delays by the Transport Ministry, it has not yet been made clear to the municipality why the ministry decided to stop construction work on the bridge on Shabbat.”
The petition claims that “the delay in building the bridge and the foot-dragging cause serious damage to the residents of the city of Tel Aviv-Jaffa and metropolitan Tel Aviv, which is why the municipality does not intend to wait any longer and has decided to turn to the courts.”
Two months ago, following the fierce opposition of the ultra-Orthodox parties to carrying out the bridge construction work on Shabbat, Transport Minister Katz announced that construction on the bridge would be suspended for half a year. When the city protested, Katz said that “mayors don’t decides whether or not to shut down the Ayalon Highway.”
The reason for the need to construct the bridge on Shabbat has to do with the disastrous impact that shutting down the eight-lane highway running through the city and connecting the northern and southern bedroom communities would have on weekday traffic, likely resulting in millions of dollars of damages to local businesses.
But MK Uri Maklev (United Torah Judaism) argued that “just as you know how to close the streets for marathons and bicycle races and other such events, the same approach must be used in building such complex engineering infrastructures. Everything can have a solution, using timetables and proper planning. Desecrating the Shabbat is not the solution.”
Truth be told, marathons and other races are commonly scheduled for Friday in Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities, since Friday is a kind of Sunday for Israelis, when government offices and non-essential businesses are closed or operate with a skeleton staff. Can the works on the bridge begin Thursday night and run through early evening on Friday? Stay tuned.
