![[illustrative]](https://images.jpost.com/image/upload/f_auto,fl_lossy/t_Article2016_Control/162203 "Egged bus 74 normal day 311 Photo By: Marc Israel Sellem")
Egged bus 74 normal day 311.
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
Both Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres
championed a woman's right to sit or appear in public spaces freely
during a human trafficking conference at the President's Residence in
Jerusalem Friday.
Israel is no place "to exclude anyone, certainly not half the population," the prime minister said.
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Netanyahu
said that women must feel secure in public spaces, and that attempting to control a woman's freedom of movement in the public realm is counter to democratic and Jewish values.
"Anyone
who violates the rights of women violates the principles of the State
of Israel," the prime minister declared, adding that there are still
women in Israel who suffer from physical, psychological, and verbal
abuse.
"No
man has the authority to force a woman to sit where he wants. If a man
doesn't want to get on a bus, then he shouldn't get on. No one is
forcing him," the president said.
The comments from Netanyahu and Peres came after US Secretary of State
Hilary Clinton reportedly expressed concern at the Saban Forum in
Washington DC earlier this month about the current state of Israeli democracy.
Clinton reportedly singled out the issue of gender segregation on buses as particularly unsettling, likening it to Rosa Parks, the black civil rights icon who in 1955 protested separate black
and white seating in the southern US.
In January, the High Court of Justice scrapped so-called
“mehadrin” public buses operated by the Egged bus company, but it is far
from clear that the ruling will put an end to the gender separation
arrangement in which female passengers are frequently forced to sit at
the back of the bus.
Jonah Mandel contributed to this report.