Trains don’t roll on Shabbos either

For the second week in a row, the spat over railway construction on Saturdays rules the front pages, this time after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put the kibosh on work carried out on the Jewish Sabbath and lashed out at his transportation minister for letting it go forward in the first place. The shutdown of train operations on Sunday as a result of Saturday’s work cancellation sends passengers along the trunk line between Tel Aviv and Haifa scrambling for alternatives.

Health Minister Yaakov Litzman, the head of the United Torah Judaism party, told Netanyahu that a prominent rabbi leading the Gur Hassidic sect instructing him to leave the government should the Sabbath be violated, Haaretz reports.

This aggression will not stand, man, Netanyahu said in a statement Saturday night, in which he accused Katz of “initiating the crisis to undermine relations between the prime minister and the ultra-Orthodox public” and “holding the traveling public and soldiers hostage.”

Israel Hayom follows Netanyahu’s lead and squarely places the blame for the coalition crisis on Katz, for letting the construction happen on the Sabbath. Israel Hayom quotes “senior sources on behalf of Netanyahu” saying that the prime minister is weighing firing Katz, and quotes Netanyahu’s chief of staff saying that “Katz tried to carry out a putsch against Netanyahu in the Likud secretariat.” The paper uses the first part of that quote as its headline, casting a shadow over the transportation minister in its coverage.

Indeed, the pro-Netanyahu tabloid devotes the first 11 pages of its coverage on Sunday to the many ins, outs and what-have-yous of the Sabbath trains. Yedioth Ahronoth spills a similar amount of ink, including a scathing piece in which it reports on the protests against the closure of the train from Friday night to Sunday night, including the outcry from soldiers forced to slog their way back to base Saturday night to avoid entanglement in the Sunday morning crush created by the train cancellations.

Writing in Yedioth Ahronoth, Nahum Barnea says that the current political crisis was “created out of weakness of character, malice, perhaps idiocy as well — not because of a real problem.” He accuses the ultra-Orthodox politicians of weakness of character for responding to every tiny talkback, in the parlance of our times. But he says the real issue lies within the Likud party.

“Yisrael Katz tried to dwarf Netanyahu’s rule in his party’s institutions. According to Netanyahu’s version it was an attempt at a palace coup, a putsch; according to Katz, it was a move intended to prevent Netanyahu from appointing his people in a way that would entangle everyone, including Katz, in criminality.”

Unlike former Likud ministers Moshe Ya’alon and Gideon Sa’ar, Katz is standing his ground and won’t resign, Barnea writes.

“He isn’t capable of replacing Netanyahu, but he is capable of getting him in up to his neck. The man who presents himself as one of the greatest leaders the world has known is exposed as a paranoid, jealous politician who quibbles with his peers and fails to deal with a so-what problem,” he says. “Katz is the mirror Netanyahu wants to break.”

Israel Hayom’s Mati Tuchfeld agrees with Barnea on the fact that the crisis is not about the Sabbath or trains, but rather just a facade for an internal Likud power struggle. Katz knows that the Israeli media is clearly “anti-ultra-Orthodox” and that if Netanyahu appears to concede to the Haredi parties on the issue of construction on Saturdays, he’ll be on the wrong side of public opinion. Katz fabricated a governmental crisis over the Sabbath, he says, echoing Netanyahu’s office. “A string drawn too tight will eventually break. The question of whether we’ve reached that point or not will be answered soon.” The coalition’s life is in his hands.

The current crisis is a problem for Netanyahu, writes Haaretz’s Yossi Verter, because this isn’t the familiar left vs. right battle he’s comfortable fighting. He’s trying to push blame onto Katz “in the hope that [public] anger will be turned on him.”

“Hundreds of thousands of civilians and soldiers will pay the price for Netanyahu’s embarrassing capitulation to the ultra-Orthodox” for construction “not in Mea Shearim nor in Bnei Brak but in secular greater Tel Aviv,” Verter says.

“The assessment yesterday in Katz’s circles was that the letter of dismissal was coming sooner rather than later. In that case Katz plans to hold a press conference and say what’s on his mind. He won’t mince words.”

Verter says that the Haredi party leaders “could have swallowed the construction projects considered essential if someone had put them in their place. But knowing the client standing before them, suitably pushable and squeezable, they had to push and squeeze. They haven’t had a prime minister more accommodating than Netanyahu, because of his political and coalition situation, just as he hasn’t had strategic partners more comfortable.”