SAEDNEWS: A dispute among Israeli women at Jerusalem’s Western Wall escalated into a confrontation on Friday, prompting police intervention and several arrests. The incident was linked to tensions surrounding the way women’s prayers are conducted at the site.
According to SaedNews: Hebrew-language news site Ynet reported widespread confusion at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport on Friday, with some passengers already seated on aircraft but waiting for their luggage to arrive, while many others wandered through crowded terminals because of flight delays.
The airport was experiencing unusually heavy congestion, and numerous flights failed to depart on schedule because baggage loading had not been completed. Passengers also told the outlet that luggage from several aircraft that had already landed had yet to be unloaded, leaving travelers waiting on the ground for hours.
Passengers scheduled to fly to Ben Gurion were likewise informed that flights to the airport were temporarily impossible because of the severe congestion and traffic there.
Ynet’s reporter said the main problem appeared to involve aircraft baggage loading and unloading. The Airports Authority denied that a baggage-handling workers’ strike was responsible, saying the delays resulted from heavy air traffic in Europe as well as the refueling of U.S. aircraft at Ben Gurion. Passengers, however, maintained that a strike by airport employees was also contributing to the disruption and had made the airport’s problems worse.
One passenger traveling to the occupied Palestinian territories told Ynet that he had been sitting on his aircraft for more than an hour and a half without permission to depart. He said passengers were initially told of a 30-minute delay on the way to the airport. They boarded at 11:50, watched El Al videos, and were then told that delays in Israel meant air-traffic control was not allowing the flight to leave because of airport congestion. Some crew members, however, said Ben Gurion was experiencing a strike and baggage workers had stopped working.
Another passenger described a similar situation, saying they had spent two hours aboard an Arkia aircraft that remained parked without its luggage. Crew members reportedly said baggage workers had walked off the job, leaving passengers unsure when they would be able to depart.
Ynet also cited reports of major delays unloading bags from arriving aircraft. At 8:02 a.m., one user on X wrote that her sister had reported complete chaos among passengers who had arrived after an overnight flight, with people waiting for hours to collect their luggage. She said her sister had already been stuck there for about two hours and called the level of congestion in August shocking. Other passengers were reportedly waiting more than four hours for their bags.
Meanwhile, Israel’s Transport Ministry said in a statement that the presence of numerous U.S. aerial refueling aircraft at Ben Gurion, where they were being refueled, had left 90,000 passengers stranded.
According to SaedNews: Israel’s Channel 14 reported that a serious confrontation broke out among Israeli women at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, forcing police to intervene and arrest several people.
The report said the incident began early Friday, coinciding with the start of the month of Elul, and quickly created tensions at the Western Wall, the name used by Israelis for one of the walls of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.
Women described as seeking to provoke a confrontation returned to the site and attempted to hold collective prayers and worship according to the Reform movement’s practices. Their presence angered Palestinian men and women praying there, who viewed the activity as a deliberate provocation and an overt disruption of prayer arrangements at the site. The disagreement then escalated into a serious confrontation.
Loud shouting was heard as tensions increased in the women’s section. Police stationed at the location intervened and detained several people who had objected to the conduct of the women who had come to the Western Wall. Some worshippers criticized the police response and Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s minister of national security.
Channel 14 acknowledged that religious differences among various ideological and religious currents have led authorities to consider dividing the site, describing the issue as evidence of the unresolved religious divisions among Israelis.
According to the channel, Friday morning’s events were part of a broader dispute over the future and character of the Western Wall. At the beginning of each month, groups of religious-school girls and students studying Hebrew commonly gather at the site to hold the “Women of the Wall” prayer, a practice that has repeatedly led to confrontations among different religious groups. These recurring disputes have repeatedly turned the Western Wall area into a venue for protests and arguments over the nature of the site.
