The Bnei Brak Municipality said Saturday evening that it had ordered dumpsters and other objects to block the entrance to a neighborhood with a significant secular population on the outskirts of the predominantly ultra-Orthodox city due to the Shabbat day of rest.
Images from the Tel Aviv suburb showed dumpsters and other objects in the middle of roads to prevent motorists from driving there during the Sabbath. One video showed a group of ultra-Orthodox residents who were standing by debris blocking the road crowding around a police cruiser that arrived at the scene.
The dumpsters were unloaded from trucks before the start of Shabbat, according to the Haaretz daily, which quoted a resident of the area as saying that one of the drivers told her the municipality sent them.
“What happens if there is a fire?” a resident of the area told the newspaper. “There is going to be a religious war in the neighborhood and the police cannot cope.”
Secular residents called the police, who arrived at the scene but indicated to residents that it would be difficult to remove the roadblock due to the “complex situation,” Channel 12 news reported Friday, suggesting that law enforcement had sided with the Haredi extremists.
