ISRAEL’S ULTRA ORTHODOX PLAN HUGE ANTI DRAFT PROTEST

Jerusalem was bracing on Sunday for a mass protest of ultra-Orthodox Jews enraged over plans to conscript their young men for military service.

Police said that "hundreds of thousands" were likely to attend the demonstration alongside the main road in and out of the city and that there would be major disruption to traffic. 

Police have completed security preparations for huge demonstration Sunday afternoon at entrance of Jerusalem.

• "Hundreds of thousands protesters are expected," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld wrote on Twitter. He said that 3,500 police would be deployed to maintain public order.
• The protest and prayer meeting, called by leading ultra-Orthodox rabbis, was scheduled to begin at 4:00 pm (1400 GMT) and last for two hours, but the Jerusalem city council said roads in the area would close from 2:00 pm along with the central bus station.
• The protests were sparked by cuts in government funding to Jewish theological seminaries, or yeshivas, and a planned crackdown on young ultra-Orthodox men seeking to avoid Israel's compulsory military draft.

The cabinet last year agreed to end a practice under which tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox were exempted from military service if they were in full-time yeshiva study.

While new legislation is so far incomplete, the authorities are hardening enforcement of existing law, which had previously been patchy, with many of the ultra-Orthodox formally exempted and a blind eye turned to many others.

MP Nissim Zeev, of the opposition ultra-Orthodox Shas party, said the new policy amounted to religious persecution.

Source: AFP, Agency