Bnei Brak Municipality says it is behind blocking of neighborhood to traffic during Shabbat

The Bnei Brak Municipality said Saturday evening that it had ordered dumpsters and other objects to block the entrance to a neighborhood with a significant secular population on the outskirts of the predominantly ultra-Orthodox city due to the Shabbat day of rest.

Images from the Tel Aviv suburb showed dumpsters and other objects in the middle of roads to prevent motorists from driving there during the Sabbath. One video showed a group of ultra-Orthodox residents who were standing by debris blocking the road crowding around a police cruiser that arrived at the scene.

The dumpsters were unloaded from trucks before the start of Shabbat, according to the Haaretz daily, which quoted a resident of the area as saying that one of the drivers told her the municipality sent them.

“What happens if there is a fire?” a resident of the area told the newspaper. “There is going to be a religious war in the neighborhood and the police cannot cope.”

Secular residents called the police, who arrived at the scene but indicated to residents that it would be difficult to remove the roadblock due to the “complex situation,” Channel 12 news reported Friday, suggesting that law enforcement had sided with the Haredi extremists.

Army Radio, however, cited police as saying they were dealing with the roadblocks, while Haaretz reported that after several hours, a police volunteer cleared the dumpsters, though other barricades remained in place.

The “vast majority of the neighborhood,” the municipality claimed on Saturday, “consists of Shabbat-observant residents, who wish to preserve the neighborhood’s character on Shabbat and Jewish holidays. To that end, the municipal transportation committee approved the closure of the Moshe Yehuda Leib bridge on Shabbat, while leaving an available entrance and exit through the Design Center compound.”

“It is highly regrettable to see that some are disrespecting the arrangements, breaking municipal rules, and trying to inflame the tensions and create unnecessary provocations on the ground,” it added, claiming that last week, a local resident was attacked with a screwdriver and injured, and this week a girl was hit by a vehicle due to “wild driving and carelessness in the neighborhood.”

However, the police said on Friday that the municipality hadn’t passed a formal decision to close the road on weekends, according to the Ynet news site, which also said the city council’s opposition chief Yaakov Vider concurred and said that passing an orderly decision to place the roadblocks would require clearing bureaucratic hurdles that haven’t been cleared to date.

Ultra-Orthodox residents have placed roadblocks at the same place in recent weeks, though the means used this week were the most far-reaching.

ושוב. באופן חריג מאוד עשרות חרדים חוסמים אוטובוסים של אגד בכניסה לירושלים. חסומים כבר חצי שעה 10 אוטובוסים
אין משטרה pic.twitter.com/swjo0o5DY6

— לירן תמרי | Liran Tamari (@liran__tamari) August 29, 2026

Meanwhile in Jerusalem, ultra-Orthodox protesters blocked the entrance to the capital on Saturday evening to stop buses from passing before the end of Shabbat.

Images showed the protesters placing roadblocks to stop the buses, which had arrived from the north of the country.

According to Haaretz, the road was blocked for around an hour, until police sent reinforcements shortly before the end of Shabbat in order to “disperse the rioters and restore normal traffic.”

But the Ynet news site reported that only one police vehicle was sent to the scene, and left without clearing the road, which was voluntarily reopened by the Haredi protesters later, after Shabbat had ended.

The incidents followed several other recent disturbances involving ultra-Orthodox radicals, including demonstrations against the arrest of draft dodgers and rioting over the expansion of the Jerusalem Light Rail.