Parks authority ‘examining’ minister’s plan for sex-segregated swimming at nature springs

Cnaan Lidor is The Times of Israel's Jewish World reporter

A Byzantine-era pool discovered at the site of Ein Hanya, near Jerusalem, and revealed to the public on Wednesday, January 31, 2018. (Assaf Peretz/Israel Antiquities Authority)
A Byzantine-era pool discovered at the site of Ein Hanya, near Jerusalem, and revealed to the public on Wednesday, January 31, 2018. (Assaf Peretz/Israel Antiquities Authority)

A government ministry’s announcement of sex-segregated bathing at two nature reserves this month is setting off a power tussle between the ministry and the agency meant to implement the controversial plan.

The segregated swimming, which is meant to accommodate the religious requirements of Jewish devout visitors, is a monthlong pilot program that will happen twice a week at the Einot Tzukim oasis in the Judean Desert and at the Ein Hanya spring near Jerusalem, Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman says in a statement Tuesday.

But in response to a query on the subject, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, which operates under the minister, says it has stipulations that will determine whether it will implement the plan. INPA has not announced on its website or other media the altered opening hours and will not commit to observing them.

The Authority is “examining the possibility” of implementing the sex-segregated swimming plan, a spokesperson tells The Times of Israel. “We’re making preparations and intend to implement the plan, but it’s still being examined by legal experts and we’re waiting for their position,” the INPA’s spokeswoman, Shlomit Shavit, tells the Times of Israel. INPA “is not able to implement” unless the legal experts sign off on it, she adds.

Many devoutly religious Orthodox Jews refrain from mixed swimming, deeming it immodest. Some visitors object to the introduction of segregation in public areas, which they perceive as an unreasonable infringement on their civil rights and religious coercion.

According to the plan, the reserve around Einot Tzukim is to open for segregated bathing 1.5 hours earlier than the usual opening time of 8 a.m. on Wednesdays and Thursdays in August. At Ein Hanya, opening hours will be extended for segregated bathing from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Sundays and Wednesdays throughout August, according to a statement from Silman.

In 2020, the parks authority on its own initiative announced segregated bathing times at Einot Tzukim on two dates in September, at the expense of unsegregated bathing at some of the oasis’s pools. But amid protest, the INPA postponed the plan pending legal examination and ultimately scrapped it altogether.

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