Israeli Plan for Gender Segregation on Buses Draws Fire

Another battlefront opened in Israel’s religious-secular war on Thursday after the Transportation Ministry unveiled plans to extend segregated bus service--men seated in front, women in back--to some neighborhoods of Jerusalem and Bnei Brak.

Transportation Minister Yitzhak Levy, of the National Religious Party, said offering segregated buses in religious communities is an attempt to meet the special needs of the ultra-Orthodox, who separate men and women in public, and increase ridership.

“We have only one goal, and that is to support public transportation,” Levy said in an interview.

But women’s rights activists and secular Israeli leaders called the service discriminatory and charged that it was part of an ongoing effort by the ultra-Orthodox, or haredim, to impose their values on Israeli society, particularly in Jerusalem.

“It’s another brick in the wall of haredi influence,” said Esther Sivan, a lawyer with the Israel Women’s Network.

“This deteriorates the situation of women in Israel and goes against the principles of equality and justice. It is an opening that legitimizes all forms of discrimination. The next step will be separate queues in banks for men and women. And then for Arabs, because the Jewish nationalists don’t like the goyim,” Sivan said.

The Women’s Network sent a three-page letter in the language of a legal brief to Levy making these points, and Sivan said the group will take the issue to Israel’s Supreme Court.

Similar threats by the Women’s Network in the last year prompted a major supermarket chain to revoke a policy in one of its Jerusalem stores that women had to wear long skirts on the premises, and forced a post office branch in another religious community of Jerusalem to end its ban on the hiring of women.

Ornan Yekutieli, a Jerusalem city councilman and co-founder of the Am Chofshi group to counter “religious coercion,” said he too will consider a legal challenge. Yekutieli led the unsuccessful battle to keep the Jerusalem thoroughfare, Bar Ilan Street, open to traffic on the Jewish Sabbath.

The Supreme Court allowed the Transportation Ministry to close the street during prayer times, which amount to several hours each Sabbath. The east-west artery bisects a religious neighborhood.

“Bus segregation is part of the big-picture culture war happening in Israel,” Yekutieli said. “It is another step after closing the road to driving on Shabbat. They do this step by step. That way they win the war.”

In fact, a segregated bus line has been operating in the religious city of Bnei Brak, near Tel Aviv, for about a year without much fanfare. Transportation Ministry officials said that, after consulting with a committee of haredi leaders and bus company representatives, it had decided to add another segregated bus line in Bnei Brak on Sept. 1, and “on a trial basis” institute two such lines in haredi neighborhoods of Jerusalem before the end of the year.

The buses will have signs saying “Religious Line” and separate entrances for men and women.

Transportation Ministry officials said the segregation plan came at the request of the religious communities and the bus companies that serve the areas. Spokesman Yitzhak Rath said the government-subsidized Dan and Eged companies felt that they were losing business to segregated taxis and minibuses in the religious communities--a market of large families and adults who do not own cars or drive.

The Transportation Ministry, apparently anticipating lawsuits, will implement no regulations and seek no laws governing bus segregation. Officials insisted that compliance will be “voluntary.”

Opponents say tax dollars should not subsidize segregation of any kind in a democratic country.