The High Court of Justice on Tuesday held a long-delayed hearing over prayer arrangements at the Western Wall, with the justices openly pressing state officials and the Jerusalem Municipality over why – nearly a decade after a government-backed compromise was approved – worshippers at the egalitarian plaza still cannot reliably reach the Wall itself, and why basic upgrades have remained stuck for years.
At the center of the case is the so-called “Kotel Agreement,” a compromise approved by the government in January 2016 after negotiations coordinated by then-cabinet secretary Avichai Mandelblit and then-Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky.
The deal was meant to develop “Ezrat Yisrael,” the southern prayer area near Robinson’s Arch, as a recognized space for mixed, egalitarian prayer, with a management framework that would include representatives of the Reform and Conservative movements and Women of the Wall, and with state funding for maintenance and services. Orthodoxy would retain control of the main, traditional plaza. But under political pressure from ultra-Orthodox parties, the government moved in 2017 to freeze the plan.
Petitions challenging that freeze have been pending for close to a decade, with the petitioners arguing that the drawn-out limbo has produced an ongoing violation of equality and religious-freedom rights at Judaism’s most symbolically charged site. The hearing came after years in which the state repeatedly sought delays for shifting reasons – from elections to the COVID-19 pandemic to the war and bureaucratic disputes – a pattern the petitioners say has effectively prevented a real decision.
This time, the court refused a fresh request to postpone, convening an expanded panel headed by Supreme Court Chief Justice Isaac Amit, alongside Justices Noam Solberg, Dafna Barak-Erez, David Mintz, Yael Willner, Alex Stein, and Gila Kanfi-Steinitz. The hearing was broadcast live.
A major flashpoint in court was the problem of physical access to the egalitarian section. Petitioners say a wooden platform damaged years ago has never been properly repaired, leaving worshippers unable to approach or touch the stones of the Wall from the southern plaza – an issue they frame not as symbolic but as basic: Without access, the “alternative” is not really an alternative.
In filings ahead of the hearing, petitioners argued that both a large-scale renovation permit and a smaller, more immediate repair permit had been stalled since 2023, with little progress until the hearing date forced action.
They pointed to a dispute over planning authority and procedural bottlenecks and said that the state has still not laid out a credible timetable for when permits would be issued, when work would begin, or when it would end.
Kotel Agreement: Agencies acknowledge the problem, then push responsibility elsewhere
Those arguments echoed what petitioners described as the pattern that has defined the case: Agencies acknowledging the problem and then adjudicating responsibility elsewhere.
In court on Tuesday, according to accounts shared by the petitioners, state lawyers and municipal representatives each suggested the other was to blame for the fact that necessary infrastructure work had not moved forward – a posture that drew skepticism from the bench.
Beyond the construction holdup, petitioners also returned to another sensitive front: inequality in the treatment, in their view, of the southern egalitarian area and the main Orthodox plaza. They argued that, while the main plaza receives robust state funding and infrastructure investment, the southern section operates on a far more limited budget and relies heavily on the Masorti (Conservative) movement’s own efforts to function.
The petitions before the court are not limited to infrastructure and budgets. They also touch on the flashpoint that has repeatedly ignited confrontations at the Wall: Women of the Wall’s monthly prayer event and the rules around Torah scrolls in the women’s section of the main plaza.
Petitioners argued that prohibiting women from bringing in a Torah scroll – or denying them access to publicly owned scrolls at the site – effectively blocked their ability to pray according to their custom.
The Chief Rabbinate arrived at Tuesday’s hearing with a sharply stated message of its own. In a notice distributed Monday, the Rabbinate emphasized that it had received authorization for separate legal representation and sought to present its own detailed position to the court. It attached a halachic ruling by Israel’s chief rabbis and a letter from Western Wall Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch describing what he called the long-standing “custom of the place,” arguing that the site’s sanctity and established prayer practice cannot be altered.
Rabinovitch has consistently maintained that the Wall is open to all, but only as long as visitors respect the site’s accepted practice, portraying that practice as the framework that prevents constant confrontation. The Rabbinate’s broader legal argument asserts that matters of halachic character and prayer custom at the Wall are not issues for judicial intervention.
For the petitioners, the core claim is simpler: The state offered an “alternative” at Ezrat Yisrael, then froze the political agreement, then allowed the practical alternative to stagnate, with even relatively modest repairs needed to enable access left unresolved for years. They are asking the court to stop accepting open-ended updates and instead require a clear, enforceable plan with defined dates for permits, construction, and completion.