"The protest consists of loud yelling at passing cars as protesters push back and forth with the police. It is actually a deal worked out between the police,politicians and chareidi leadership where the rally lasts each week for an hour and absloutely no arrests are made."
Lipa, a FailedMessiah.com reader writes:
I'm on a two week visit to jerusalem. Here is an exact update. Each week there is a small vocal rally on Rechov Haneveim. Each shabbos a crowd of about 100 protesters made up of yeshiva and yerushalmi individuals gather at 3:45 in the afternoon at the Jupnik square and march to the designated protest site where police await them.
The protest consists of loud yelling at passing cars as protesters push back and forth with the police. It is actually a deal worked out between the police,politicians and chareidi leadership where the rally lasts each week for an hour and absloutely no arrests are made.This week about 20 eight year olds kept wheeling garabage bins down rechov yeshayahu and had [them] rolling down the hilly street so that the[y] blocade[d] passing cars on rechov neveim.The police chief in charge kept his officers in line by having them wheel all oncoming garabage bins to an empty lot. It was a real comical scene to watch police officers rolling garbage bins as the little kids kept rolling out garbage bins from different streets and pushing them down the hilly road towards the rally site. The police themselves seemed amused and some of the younger police officers joint the chorus chant yelling Shabbos.
The only ones who did not think it was comical were the secular or arab drivers who most u-turned their cars as to avoid the loud charedi mob.
One of the protest speakers mentioned how pleased they were with the current trolley trains opening soon on Jaffa street. This means that all streets where the trolley will operate will no longer have vehicle traffic and thus further limit streets open to shabbos traffic. It also gives chareidim easier targets as more vehicles are forced to pass certain limited areas as access into Jerusalems main tourist sites gets reduced due to the new trolley. The trolley train will not operate on the Sabbath or Jewish holidays.