Shas head threatens coalition after bridge rubble cleared on Shabbat
Minister Aryeh Deri says his ultra-Orthodox party won’t let another incident pass, after workers spotted removing remains of Maariv flyover on Jewish day of rest
Economy Minister Aryeh Deri issued a strongly worded complaint Saturday night to protest what he says was the desecration of Shabbat by construction work to remove rubble from a demolished Tel Aviv overpass.
In letters to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz, Deri, head of the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party, said his faction would not stand by idly should work on the Tel Aviv light rail during the Jewish day of rest continue, hours after workers were spotted clearing the remains of the Maariv flyover.
“The next time there is an unneeded and outrageous desecration of Shabbat to work on the Tel Aviv light rail or any other state project as happened on this Shabbat, which was not needed for life-saving reasons, the Shas faction I head will not let this pass,” Deri wrote in the letter, widely published in Hebrew media.
On Friday, construction workers building the Tel Aviv light rail demolished the Maariv flyover, a major traffic junction in central Tel Aviv, with Katz hitting the plunger to detonate the bridge’s pylons in a highly choreographed event.
According to Deri, he and Katz agreed during a meeting Thursday that work on clearing the rubble would stop with the onset of Shabbat, on Friday evening. However, on Saturday morning, workers and heavy construction equipment were seen working to get rid of piles of concrete and metal rebar.
The construction work is being carried out by Danya Cebus, an Israeli firm owned by Africa-Israel investments, which was contracted for the massive project, expected to take seven years.
In the letter, Deri did not detail what steps his party would take in the future. However, with Netanyahu’s coalition holding onto power with a razor-thin 61-seats, a complaint from a small party like Shas can still become a full-blown coalition crisis.
Work on clearing the rubble was supposed to be done within 48 hours, which would necessitate working over Shabbat, according to the Ynet news website.
Danya Cebus subcontracted with an Arab construction company for the work over Shabbat to skirt the rule, but chief Tel Aviv rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau said without an danger to the public, there was no reason to condone the use of heavy machinery over the day of rest, Ynet reported.
Deri complained in the letter that the work was carried out on Friday and not Sunday or earlier in the week, when there would have been no issue of working on Shabbat. The demolition was likely scheduled for Friday, a non-work day for most Israelis, to keep from impacting Tel Aviv’s traffic flow during rush hour on a work day.
Destruction of the 39-year-old overpass, which bypasses a major — and often congested– intersection in the center of the city, still managed to snarl traffic.
The flyover was named for the offices of a daily newspaper located nearby.
Tel Aviv is bracing for several more years of traffic tie-ups and other issues during construction, leading to complaints.
Construction of the long-awaited train system began earlier this month.
Shop owners have said that traffic changes needed for construction of the light rail will hurt their businesses
Katz said Friday that he was aware of the criticism against the planned roadworks but said that “when the dust settles from detonating the bridge and the dust settles from finishing the works in a few years, the biggest skeptics will understand that the decision I made, to go against the flow and move forward with the project, was the right one for [the Tel Aviv region] and for all of Israel.”
There was no immediate response from Katz or Netanyahu to Deri’s letter.
The Times of Israel Community.