Tel Aviv light rail extends Saturday evening hours amid protests over Shabbat closure
Tram to begin service an hour earlier, extend past midnight; Friday saw activists once again chain themselves to car to demand it run on Shabbat
After two weekends of protests against the launch of the Tel Aviv light rail without service on Shabbat, the company operating the tram has extended the hours on which it will run on Saturday evenings.
This Saturday, the light rail began operating at 8:30 p.m., an hour earlier than it did last week on its first weekend in operation. Shabbat ended in Tel Aviv shortly before 8 p.m.
The final trams are scheduled to finish their service close to 1 a.m. — about an hour later than it does on weekdays and later than it did last week — according to the light rail website, which announced the changes on Friday.
On Friday, activists in Tel Aviv cuffed themselves to the final light rail tram of the day for the second weekend running to protest its lack of operations during Shabbat and Jewish holidays. The light rail operator halted the tram line about a half hour before it was slated to end due to the protests.
Police arrived on the scene and prevented others from joining the protest at the underground station, but did not move to forcibly evacuate the activists in the rail cars. Some protesters set up a table with challah and wine and held a Shabbat prayer service inside the tram.
The protesters ultimately dispersed without clashes, but vowed to continue such activity each Friday until the light rail starts operating on Saturdays.
The light rail, which carries passengers 24 kilometers (15 miles) across 34 stations from Bat Yam to Petah Tikva, opened to the public August 18 after decades of planning, years of construction and a long series of delays. The new light rail reignited simmering frustration in the secular public over the lack of public transportation on Shabbat.
Former transportation minister Merav Michaeli had promised that the light rail would operate on Shabbat, but that decision was reversed by current Transportation Minister Miri Regev, who said the tram would honor the long-running “status quo” on issues of religion and state in Israel, where there is extremely limited public transport on the Sabbath.
Residents of the Haredi city of Bnei Brak — which has three stops on the light rail, though all underground — were outraged when Michaeli said it would run on Shabbat, but secular residents of Tel Aviv and surrounding neighborhoods are furious that the transport option is not available on Friday evenings and Saturdays.
The protests against the light rail’s Shabbat shutdown come in the shadow of months of growing opposition outrage with the right-wing religious government and burgeoning frustration with the ultra-Orthodox control over issues of religion and state.
On Thursday, a women’s activist group held a protest in Bnei Brak against what organizers view as Haredi oppression of women and the state acquiescence to such demands.
The protest came after several weeks of incidents in which women were barred or discriminated against on public transportation, with some drivers citing their clothing choices as offensive to Haredi male passengers.
