Anger as strictly Orthodox Israeli city moves to gender-segregate several streets

Bnei Brak is set to be the first city in Israel to officially designate gender-segregated streets, with opponents urging the general public to fight against the move.

As reported by Israeli media, two streets in the city – the Ezra Street thoroughfare and the adjoining Shlomo Hamelech (King Solomon) street, will have segregated pavements for men and women, with accompanying signs. The local authority told Israel’s Channel 13 that senior rabbis in the city had made the decision, and that “the city’s public, which is committed to obeying the great Torah leaders and heeding their words, will comply with their request.” However, in response to subsequent backlash, the local authority later stressed that “this is not a municipal directive or municipal policy”, saying that “the municipality assisted only in developing and expanding the physical infrastructure in the area because of congestion”, given the presence of several event halls in the vicinity.

“The call for separation in the area surrounding the event halls is an initiative of the city’s rabbis directed directly to the public,” the municipality claimed.

The announcement has come at a particularly sensitive moment in Israel, with the country’s governing coalition, which has maintained power only by the support of Charedi parties, passing a highly controversial law on Tuesday banning arrests of Charedi draft dodgers. The refusal of many Charedim to serve in the Israeli army, a longstanding point of friction within general society, is increasingly seen as untenable, given the pressure on serving soldiers and reservists in what is now almost a three-year period of constant fighting on multiple fronts.

Yair Lapid, leader of Israel’s Yesh Atid party, reacted with anger to the street segregation announcement, posting on social media: “Can there be a street in Israel where Charedim are forbidden from walking? Because there is a street where women are forbidden from walking.”

As reported by Times of Israel, Yael Yechieli, the director of the 5050 initiative, which works for Israeli gender equality in Israel, decried the move, saying that “religious leaders want to exclude women from everywhere, and if we don’t stop them, it will continue.” She noted that all of the people who had made the decision at a municipal level were men, and warned that “The monster of segregation is insatiable. The disaster of segregation must end and the public needs to fight for it.”

This is not the first time that there have been attempts to segregate roads in strictly Orthodox towns in Israel; in 2017 the country’s Supreme Court ordered the removal of a sign in the city of Beit Shemesh which was attempting to enforce the gender segregation of roads.

According to a report from Ynet, the segregation measures are specifically intended to apply during times of day when large events are taking place at the venues in that location, to reduce crowding and prevent mingling between men and women.