Israel’s deputy minister of labor, Menahem Porush, a member of the Orthodox Agudat Yisrael party, has followed through on his promise to severely curtail Sabbath operations at Ben-Gurion Airport.
Porush this week submitted a formal request to Transport Minister Moshe Katsav and Minister of Absorption Yitzhak Peretz to cut back Sabbath flights of immigrants from Eastern Europe.
He argued that prior rabbinical authorization for such flights on security grounds were now without grounds, because, he contended, the immigrants’ security is no longer threatened.
Porush charged, moreover, that the rabbinical permit has been abused. He claimed El Al is operating a higher proportion of immigrant flights on Friday night and Saturday than at other times.
El Al’s president, Rafi Harlev, said during a news conference in New York last week that it is not realistic to prevent Israel’s only international airport from functioning on Saturdays.
“The best that can be done,” he said, “is to reduce the number of people working in the airport on Shabbat.”
Katsav, himself a Sabbath observer who vigorously opposes all moves to shut down Ben-Gurion on Saturdays, declared flatly that the Sabbath immigrant flights would continue.
Katsav, who is a member of Likud, said that if necessary he would have Likud introduce legislation in the Knesset enshrining the “status quo” with respect to the airport’s operations and foreign carriers.
He apparently assumes the opposition parties will support such legislation, ensuring its passage over the objections of the religious parties.
NO REPLY FROM ABSORPTION MINISTER
Porush, who as deputy minister of labor and social welfare controls issuance of Sabbath work permits, announced in early April his intention to introduce stiff new limitations on Sabbath work by the Airport Authority’s service, maintenance and other personnel and among Israeli Jews employed by overseas airlines.
Transportation sources say that enforcement of those measures would completely isolate Israel from civilian air traffic on Saturday. It would mean closing Maman, the government-owned cargo-handling and servicing company that provides ground service for foreign airlines.
Absorption Minister Peretz, a rabbi who broke away from the Orthodox Shas party last year but remained in the government as an independent, has not responded to Porush’s initiative. As the minister responsible for aliyah, he is in an embarrassing predicament.
The Agudah was the last of Israel’s four religious parties to join Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s coalition government, having held out until Shamir agreed to its religious demands.
While collectively the religious bloc commands only 18 of the Knesset’s 120 votes, it exerts considerable political clout.
The Agudah forced El Al, Israel’s national airline, to suspend Sabbath flights altogether several years ago.
Porush holds the rank of deputy minister only because his party’s elders refuse to allow it to participate fully in a secular government.
The Labor portfolio, therefore, is nominally held by Shamir, who has the authority to issue the special permits required for Sabbath work.
He has promised Agudah a drastic reduction of permits in both the public and private sectors.
He has also exhorted the Labor Ministry’s teams of Druse work inspectors to make regular checks of commercial and industrial sites to ensure they have Sabbath permits and that the permits are necessary to the national economy.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
