The Commerce Ministry on Sunday dismissed pressure to halt routine maintenance on Shabbat after a letter from United Torah Judaism leader MK Yitzhak Goldknopf called for such operations to be halted during the weekly Jewish day of rest.
In a statement on Sunday, the ministry said such work “has always been carried out within the scope of Israel Railways’ authorization to carry out maintenance and safety work”.
“There is no intention to cancel it,” she insisted.
Gold button had claimed that coalition agreements between the UTJ and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party stipulated that “this work would end”.
The railway company does not run on Shabbat, and the practice of conducting maintenance on the day of the break is intended to avoid disrupting the regular timetable as much as possible.
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In a Saturday evening letter to Transport Minister Miri Regev, Goldknopf wrote: “It has been brought to my attention that there is work at Israel Railways on Shabbat that does not meet the definition of life support” (a religious standard that allows Shabbat prohibitions to be granted break work in extreme circumstances).
Former Israel Railway CEO Shahar Ayalon told Maariv news agency on Sunday that he too had faced similar pressure from ultra-Orthodox politicians in the past.
UTJ leader Yitzhak Goldknopf during a debate ahead of the formation of Israel’s 37th government, December 29, 2022. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
When asked if it was possible to avoid working on Shabbat, Ayalon replied, “Anything is possible, but then you don’t have trains on Sunday, only on Monday.” He added that “the cost is for all of us would be congested roads”.
“We don’t have many different routes that we can use for trains when maintenance work is due. So you can’t do the maintenance on a weekday because the trains are on the tracks at that time… that would be a big disaster,” he said.
Ayalon also pointed out that due to the low rate of privately owned vehicles, Haredi society is heavily dependent on public transport, including intercity trains, and would be disproportionately affected by the prevention of maintenance on Shabbat.
UTJ has long had trouble with public works projects on the Sabbath and has previously put train maintenance at the forefront of coalition crises. The party tried to demand that the power plants stop generating energy on Shabbat in December, but the Likud rejected the proposal.
Carrie Keller-Lynn contributed to this report.
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