Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz defended on Sunday the decision to move forward with construction at a Tel Aviv train station over the weekend, including on Shabbat, amid rumors that the ultra-Orthodox faction heads were considering seeking his resignation over the issue. Speaking to Army Radio, Katz said he was not concerned about the firestorm over his decision to allow the construction to proceed. "I am meticulous about maintaining the [religious] status quo," he said. "Sometimes they come to me with complaints from the other [secular] side and the haredim applaud me." He stressed that the construction had to be done over the weekend. Israel Railways' expansion of the Hashalom Train Station, which serves some 55,000 passengers daily and is expected to see an uptick in traffic over the next few years, went ahead on Saturday, despite significant opposition from the ultra-Orthodox camp. One of the most complicated engineering tasks the national railway has undertaken in recent years, it was scheduled for the weekend due to safety concerns. Initially, the ultra-Orthodox parties threatened the stability of the coalition if the work wasn't postponed until midweek to avoid desecrating the weekly Shabbat holiday. On Friday, the Prime Minister's Office announced that any of the work that could pose a public safety risk if carried out on a weekday would proceed as planned on Saturday, including the closure of the Ayalon Highway for the station's expansion. According to the Prime Minister's Office, the track work on the Modiin-Ben-Gurion Airport line as well as the Beit Yehoshua-Atlit section of track could be postponed to a weekday. The public safety risk necessitating weekend construction translates in religious terms to "pikuach nefesh," a concept meaning that almost every Jewish law, including keeping Shabbat, can be broken to avoid endangering human lives. This allowed some of the haredi lawmakers to reach a delicate and controversial compromise on the issue. A decision was also made to establish a committee that would tighten coordination between the Transportation Ministry and the haredi factions. The committee is to be headed by a senior official from the Prime Minister's Office and will include Transportation Ministry Director General Keren Terner; Police Commissioner Roni Alsheikh, and ministers from the haredi parties or their representatives. Still, anger flared among the haredi party leaders following a press conference Katz held Saturday night, after the work was completed, in which he declared to media outlets that he had stood strong despite haredi opposition. Speaking at the construction site on Saturday, Katz said, "I did not bow to those exerting pressure. ... I absolutely did not order the work to be canceled, despite heavy pressure from various directions. I thought that a professional assessment and the position of the Israel Police had determined that there was a need to do the work over the weekend to avoid endangering people, and I backed that up." The haredi parties responded with fury to the press conference. United Torah Judaism and Shas issued a joint statement that said: "The heads of the haredi parties, Interior Minister Aryeh Mahlouf Deri, Health Minister Yakov Litzman, and Knesset Finance Committee Chairman Moshe Gafni have just consulted and decided to demand an urgent meeting with Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] given the conduct of Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz. The heads of the haredi parties object in pain to the unnecessary desecration of Shabbat by railway work in Tel Aviv." Senior officials in the haredi parties said that the party leaders had discussed the possibility of demanding that Katz resign over the matter. Gafni said that despite Katz's assurances, "the work could have been done on a weekday, rather than Shabbat. There was no assent to work [being done] on Shabbat. Apparently, lies are part of Yisrael Katz's profession. We've seen that in the past two months, when he lied to us for political reasons." Tel Aviv Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, speaking on Reshet Bet, attacked the compromise between the prime minister and the haredim, which allowed the work to go forward to avoid a public safety risk, saying: "It's not clear how they agreed to it. The use of the term 'pikuach nefesh' for anything having to do with railway infrastructure work is going too far. There is no basis for it in Jewish law." Israel Railways Director General Boaz Tzafrir said in response: "In the past 24 hours, we have carried out one of the most complicated projects Israel Railways has seen in recent years."
