Current Legal Status

As it stands, there is not religious freedom I Israel.  Please read below all of the forbidden acts by law.

As Israel does not have a constitution, each of its laws comes from different places.  These are the current laws applicable to our cause:

  • The Protection of Holy Places Law of 1967 states:
  1. The Holy Places shall be protected from desecration and any other violation and from anything likely to violate the freedom of access of the members of the different religions to the places sacred to them or their feelings with regard to those places.
  2. a. Whosoever desecrates or otherwise violates a Holy Place shall be liable to imprisonment for a term of seven years.
    b. Whosoever does anything likely to violate the freedom of access of the members of the different religions to the places sacred to them or their feelings with regard to those places shall be liable to imprisonment for a term of five years.

3. This Law shall add to, and not derogate from, any other law.

4. The Minister of Religious Affairs is charged with the implementation of this Law, and he may, after consultation with, or upon the proposal of, representatives of the religions concerned and with the consent of the Minister of Justice make regulations as to any matter relating to such implementation.

5. This Law shall come into force on the date of its adoption by the Knesset (The Law was adopted by the Knesset on June 27, 1967).

  • Bill No. 1924 (2001): Amendment to the Holy Sites Law of 1967, a new paragraph, 2a:
  1. The prayer area at the Western Wall Plaza shall be divided into a men’s section and women’s section by a divider, and prayers by men and women in a mixed group shall not be permitted there.
  2. No religious ceremony shall be held in the Wall’s women’s section. That includes taking out and reading a Torah scroll, and reading from it, blowing the shofar (ram’s horn), or wearing tallitot (prayer shawls) or tefillin (phylacteries).
  3. Violators shall be imprisoned for seven years.
  • The Regulations for the Protection of Places Holy to the Jews 1981 by the Ministry of the Religion and the Ministry of Justice forbid the following acts in the Holy Places mentioned in these regulations, including the Western Wall: desecrating the Sabbath and Jewish holidays; conducting a religious ceremony contrary to accepted practice; wearing unfit attire; peddling; conducting religious services, distributing publications or making speeches without permission from the local official of the Ministry of Religious Affairs; begging; slaughtering; eating, drinking and smoking; sleeping; and bringing in animals.
  • A special provision was added to the regulations listed above that forbids any religious service at the Wall “not according to local custom, which may hurt the feelings of the worshipers toward the place.”  Regulation 5 states that any of the above acts may entail a punishment of six to twelve months’ imprisonment or a fine of NIS 500.
  • Israel has not recognized the Mandatory Status Quo Arrangement and has not publicly guaranteed to uphold the status quo arrangement on the Western Wall.
  • A general status quo has been preserved over the years concerning the general rights of all religious communities in all the Holy Places in Israel.
  • 1948 Declaration on the Establishment of the State of Israel: “the state will guarantee freedom of religious and conscience, or language, education and culture…will safeguard the holy places of all religious.”

For more on our history, click here.