The Saturday Ban That Pushed HaShalom Onto Weekday Peaks

Repair crews cut HaShalom Bridge to one lane each way from midnight on Sunday, September 28, 2025, through 4 p.m. Tuesday, after the Transportation Ministry left Saturday unused on the span that links Tel Aviv and Givatayim over the Ayalon Highway.

The job itself was a joint replacement, 40 meters of deck seams weighing about 13 tons. Opposition leader Yair Lapid said the jams did not have to happen. The ministry said it was working to the status quo. The longer cost is the lost block of consecutive hours that used to sit on the quietest day of the Israeli road week.

One Lane Each Way Under HaShalom

The Transportation Ministry, Tel Aviv-Jaffa city hall and Netivei Ayalon, the state company that runs the freeway, framed the work as part of the Shalom-area upgrade. Crews were to pull the old seams, drill, pour concrete and set the new joints. The Ayalon beneath the bridge stayed open. The span above it did not.

Drivers heading east from Tel Aviv could not drop onto the Ayalon northbound from the bridge. Drivers heading west from Givatayim could not drop onto the southbound lanes. Left turns toward Givatayim from the southbound Ayalon were shut, and the left toward Tel Aviv from the northbound side shrank to a single lane.

TURNS AND LANES THAT CLOSED

• On the span: Travel dropped to one lane each way from midnight Sunday through 4 p.m. Tuesday.
• From the west: Begin Road and Kaplan Street lost the descent onto the Ayalon northbound.
• From the east: Derech HaShalom lost the descent onto the Ayalon southbound.
• From the freeway: The left from Ayalon south onto the bridge was blocked; the left from Ayalon north toward Begin shrank to one lane.
• A mile north: Light-rail work on Al Parashat Derachim, 1.3 kilometers from the bridge, blocked the left from Namir Road.

Waze users logged standstill on the Ayalon itself, and the backup spilled onto Highway 1, Highway 4 and the city grid from Wolfson to Arlozorov. The ministry and the city told drivers to use navigation apps and public transport. Buses and pedestrians were supposed to keep moving, with stop and route changes on the side.

The window was squeezed up against the calendar in a second way. Work stopped at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, September 30, about a day before the Yom Kippur fast, so the same no-Saturday rule also kept the job off the holiday.

The 1951 Law Already Lets Saturday Work Proceed

Israel does not have a blanket criminal ban on fixing a bridge on Saturday. The Hours of Work and Rest Law, published May 22, 1951, sets Shabbat as the weekly rest for a Jewish worker and lets a minister grant exceptions.

A special permit for weekly rest can be issued when stopping the job would harm state defense, the security of people or property, the economy, a work process, or the supply of essential public needs. The file is supposed to weigh worker welfare, Jewish tradition, whether another day would do, and the effect on the public sphere. Handling time is about a month.

In 2017 the Knesset wrote the Jewish-tradition test into the permit itself, after a coalition fight over train work on Shabbat. Ultra-Orthodox parties have argued that the status quo allows Saturday work only when life is at stake. The Transportation Ministry used that language on HaShalom.

Like all ministries, the Transportation Ministry works according to law and Israel’s status quo. Necessary and life-saving works are performed even on Shabbat. To the extent it’s not a life-and-death situation, the works take place around the clock, day and night, midweek.

Transportation Ministry statement, September 2025

The ministry also accused coverage of the jams of aiming at “division, schism and inciting sectors of the population against each other.” Miri Regev, the transportation minister, has held the harder line for years. In 2018, backing a freeze on the Yehudit Bridge, she asked why the state should desecrate Shabbat if the span could be built during the week, and she added that Saturday is also a day off for workers.

That rest-day argument is real for the crew. It is a poor match for the Ayalon, where Saturday is the one stretch the rest of the country is not trying to use at 8 a.m.

What a Weekend Shift Is Worth on the Ayalon

Ehud Uziel, a transport-policy expert who advised former transportation minister Merav Michaeli, put the mechanism in hours, not slogans. A midweek night on a live freeway is not an eight-hour shift.

In infrastructure, consecutive work time is the most critical thing. If you work at night in the middle of the week, you actually have four to five net working hours. At 5:00 you already have to finish so the road can open at 6:00. One weekend equals a full week of work. On a night like that you also hit people coming home and you make the project more expensive for the state.

Ehud Uziel, transport policy expert

Under Michaeli, he said, Saturday work ran constantly and was even doubled on the railway, which is how Highway 16 opened on time and how the fourth Israel Railways track in the center got started. Under Regev, he said, most jobs now slip three to five years, and the weekend decision is a main reason. “There are no works on Shabbat and all the projects are delayed.”

Earlier in September the same calendar had already shown up. Ayalon lanes and coastal-highway stretches north of Udim closed from midnight Thursday until 1 p.m. Friday for a bridge lift on the fast-lanes project, in the peak flow from the center toward the north before the weekend. Two days later a stretch of Highway 2 between the Rabin and Poleg interchanges closed again. Those lifts could have sat on Saturday. They sat on Thursday night instead.

Uri Keidar, who heads the civil group Israel Hofshit, called the mix of politics and work dates a habit of failing states and said a country this far behind on transport should time the jobs for the public, not for rabbis close to the minister. The sharper point is plainer than the rhetoric. Four or five broken nights do not replace a Saturday-to-Sunday block, and every later crane lift inherits the same math.

A Pattern Written Across This Highway

HaShalom is not the first place this fight has been staged over the Ayalon. The corridor is the country’s main through-road in Gush Dan, and almost every heavy lift on it becomes a Sabbath test.

SATURDAY FIGHTS ON THE SAME CORRIDOR

In June 2024 the contractor Solel Boneh warned that splitting a railway-bridge lift at Anava on Route 1 across weekdays, after a one-weekend plan was dropped, would leave drivers passing under unsafe kit. The HaShalom joint job was smaller than a 300-ton lift. It used the same clock.

Dr. Shuki Friedman, who directed the Israel Democracy Institute’s Center for Religion, Nation and State, called the 2018 Ayalon freeze a farce while hundreds of thousands of people already work on Saturday. An IDI study found about 400,000 Jewish workers on the Sabbath as of 2016, and about 100,000 people working seven days a week. A small Saturday crew on a bridge, he argued, would have saved public money and spared the jams.

Regev Kept the Ban After UTJ Walked Out

The usual telling is that ultra-Orthodox coalition partners hold the Sabbath and Tel Aviv pays in hours. That telling was already stale by the time the cones went out on HaShalom.

United Torah Judaism abandoned Netanyahu’s coalition on July 15, 2025, after rabbis on the Council of Torah Sages told Degel HaTorah to quit if a draft-exemption law was not brought forward. The HaShalom closure began 75 days later. Saturday work was still off the table.

Lapid wrote on X at 5:58 a.m. that Sunday, pointing at politics rather than piety, and noting that Likud-Haredi governments had used Saturday for this kind of job.

כל מי שיעמוד בפקקי ענק מטורפים בגוש דן החל מהבוקר, שיהיה ברור: אפשר היה לעשות את העבודות האלה בשבת ולמנוע את הפקקים, זה מה שהיו עושים כל השנים, כולל בממשלות הליכוד והחרדים. רק בממשלה הזו לא אכפת לאף אחד מהאזרחים, העיקר הפוליטיקה.

— יאיר לפיד – Yair Lapid (@yairlapid) September 28, 2025

“Anyone who will stand in giant, insane jams in Gush Dan from this morning, let it be clear: these works could have been done on Shabbat and the jams prevented. That is what was done for years, including in Likud and Haredi governments. Only in this government does nobody care about the citizens; the main thing is politics,” he wrote.

Replies tried to turn the jams into a score about Kaplan protests. The schedule does not care who is demonstrating. Saturday on the Ayalon is still the lightest traffic day in the week, and it was still empty of crews.

Regev’s rule had already become ministry practice, not a last-minute hostage payment to keep 18 ultra-Orthodox seats in the room. Permit decisions on big road jobs sit with the labor minister on paper and with the transportation minister in fact. The HaShalom notice read like a standing instruction: if it is not pikuach nefesh, do it midweek, around the clock.

The Congestion Bill Grows After the Cones Come Up

Uziel’s warning was not about one Sunday. “If this policy continues, instead of paying NIS 40 billion ($11.9 billion) a year in traffic damages we will pay NIS 50 or 60 billion ($14.9 or $17.9 billion).”

THE HOURS BEHIND THE BILL

• Net night shift: Four to five hours before the road must reopen at 6 a.m.
• One weekend: Equal, in Uziel’s account, to a full week of those nights.
• Slippage: Three to five years on most jobs under the no-Saturday rule, among other causes.
• Annual damages: NIS 40 billion now, NIS 50 or 60 billion if the rule holds, in his figures.

Those figures are his, not a state audit. They sit next to a larger pipeline that will need the same calendar. State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman, in a special report on December 30, 2025, said Metro delays cost tens of billions and that the Gush Dan Metro, 150 kilometers and 109 stations, is not due to open until 2037, twenty-one years after the plan was launched. Legally approved cost as of 2025 is NIS 177 billion. The Metro Authority had five staff. Construction trucks on the tunnel routes are expected to make about 42,000 journeys a month on roads that are already jammed.

If those trucks, and the next light-rail lifts, and the next joint replacements, all avoid Saturday, the HaShalom Sunday is the preview, not the exception. A 40-meter seam does not need a theological crisis. It needs a block of hours when the Ayalon is empty. The ministry gave those hours to the status quo and handed Sunday to the drivers instead.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who Can Approve Saturday Road Work in Israel?

The labor minister issues the permit under the 1951 law, after a file that can take about a month. On large transport jobs the transportation minister in practice decides whether to seek that permit at all, which is why Regev’s standing no-Saturday instruction, not a missing form, set the HaShalom clock.

Can Non-Jewish Crews Legally Work on Saturday?

Yes. The same law lets a non-Jewish worker pick Friday, Saturday or Sunday, plus that worker’s own holidays, as the weekly rest. A Saturday shift can be staffed without a Jewish crew if the employer has the permit structure in place and the worker’s chosen rest day is not Saturday.

What Does an Expansion Joint on a Bridge Do?

It is the metal-and-rubber seam that lets a concrete deck move as temperature and traffic load change, so the span does not crack. The HaShalom crews removed the old seam, drilled, poured concrete and set a new one; the 40 meters and 13 tons describe that hardware, not a new bridge.

What Is the Difference Between a General Permit and a Special Permit?

A general permit covers a whole sector, such as hospitals, hotels or plants that cannot stop a continuous process. A special permit is for one employer and one job, time-limited, after the ministry checks that stopping work would cause the kind of harm the law lists. A highway joint replacement sits in the special-permit column when Saturday is used at all.