A tension-rousing Israeli plan to expand the mixed-gender prayer area at al-Aqsa Mosque’s Buraq Wall (Western Wall) has won final approval following pressure from the Prime Minister’s Office Haaretz reported on Sunday.
Israel has issued approval to expedite the long-promised expansion of a mixed-gender prayer space at the Buraq Wall holy site using a legal loophole to fast-track the project following pressure by Benjamin Netanyahu.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to expand the mixed-gender prayer space known as the Ezrat Israel as compensation for nixing a broader agreement with fanatic Jewish groups which would have given them greater rights at the holy site.
According to Haaretz representatives from Netanyahu’s office together with the Jerusalem municipality have found a way to overcome the red tape and give the entire expansion the go-ahead under a legal-loophole that authorizes municipal engineers to approve work to make a site handicap accessible.
The regulation enables the municipal engineer alone to approve construction and sidestep various other local and regional planning committees approval from which could take months of deliberations to obtain.
A representative of the Attorney General’s Office opposed the idea of pushing through such an extensive and sensitive plan under the pretense of handicap accessibility Haaretz reported but the use of the loophole was ultimately approved by the Jerusalem municipality legal adviser.
The January 2016 pledge to build the pluralistic prayer space south of the current Western Wall Plaza also originally included a mixed-gender entrance in the same pavilion as the gender-segregated entrances and the establishment of a board of pluralistic Jewry to oversee the site.
But in June 2017 the latter two elements of the project were stamped out under fierce pressure from the influential ultra-Orthodox parties which form a central plank in Netanyahu’s government.
More liberal streams of Judaism such as the Reform and Conservative movements to which a significant portion of Diaspora Jews belong have long been at odds with the Israeli government over delays in the creation of a mixed-gender non-Orthodox prayer section at the Western Wall where women would also be permitted to pray with scrolls and hold religious ceremonies.
Orthodox groups believe that creating such a space defies ancient Jewish law and tradition.
