The Public Petitions Committee headed by MK Rabbi Yisrael Eichler, convened to discuss evaluate and summarize the organizers preparations for the big pilgrimage to Meron next week. At an earlier meeting held by the committee in March of this year, problems were raised concerning the lack of cooperation between organizers and the lack of funds, lights, roads, parking places, benches and more. Last night the committee convened again to receive answers and summarize the preparations for Lag B’Omer in Meron.

The CEO of the Ministry of Religious Affairs, the CEO of the National Center for the development of holy places, officials of the police department, officials of the Ministry of Transport and the various Hatzalah organizations attended.

The committee chairman MK Rabbi Yisrael Eichler said at the opening of the meeting: “This year the hearings were extremely optimistic unlike previous years where everyone complained and threw the responsibility on the shoulders of others. This year, we received written responses and constant updates of the performance in the field. Concerns were raised at the previous hearing. This time there is a feeling of freshness and acceptance of responsibility and cooperation that the preparations were more organized, and I hope not to be proven wrong.”

Oded Plus, CEO of the Ministry of Religious Affairs said: “In previous years the holy places center could not start work because they had debts of millions of shekels from previous years. We made sure to cover all the debts from previous years.

As part of a team led by me involving all the relevant factors, we formulated a budget of₪ 25 million. I’ve been told that at this stage of the game preparations have never been up to where they are today.

We put up light poles on Route 89 and Route 866 and many more roads that were not properly lighted. We expanded the parking lots significantly. We added benches, drinking facilities and rescue centers in all the parking lots.

All tasks were carried out and we were on schedule. I’m optimistic. But we have to be careful. Certainly there may be problems. We have tried to anticipate them and prevent them. We have learnt a lot of lessons from the previous years “.

Rabbi Yosef Schwinger, CEO of the National Center for the development of the holy places said: “This is the first year that we had a set budget two months before the event. In the past, we emphasized the people as a whole, this year we put an emphasis on the individual and the family. There will be dozens of drinking stations maned by multi-lingual stewards, dozens of shaded areas, hundreds of toilets connected to a sewer and water infrastructure. We have established a special area for women to drink and rest. There are 12 pampering and nursing rooms with attendants help. We went down to the details in terms of individual treatment.”

Senior director of public transportation at the Transportation Ministry Dror Ganon informed that as of Wednesday afternoon busses will start to run from 14 destinations in the country, including two new subsidized destinations Beitar Illit and Modiin Illit. He said:” Last year we finished the event with 7000 trips and upward of three hundred thousand passengers. This year we expect an increase of 15 percent. We almost reached the maximum capacity of buses in Israel! 80% of the people use public transportation to get to Meron. We take nearly 1500 buses from private companies. There will also be a lot of stations leaving the major cities, from Jerusalem itself there will be 7 stations. There are nearly 250 officials routing transport for the event.”

Officer Yossi Chemo, commander of police operations in the north, said: We plan on deploying 5,000 police officers throughout the week in Meron. There will be 12 ambulances of Ezer M’Zion and another four of Lev Malka. There will also be volunteers of United Hatzalah and MDA. We ask the public to help them in their work and to obey their instructions.

Chief Superintendent Dudu Buhadana of the police said: We’ll have shuttle buses dropping off passengers in the parking lots, throughout the day, including at night. We demanded from the Ministry of Transport That not a single person remains on the mountain without a bus. There will be messages for the public on large LED screens in three different languages.

CEO of United Hatzalah Rabbi Ze’ev Kashash spoke of the cooperation with MDA, Ezer M’zion, Lev Malka and all rescue organizations. Hundreds of volunteers will be placed in mobile teams and dozens of motorcycles will be deployed on the mountain. They also built two medical clinics in case of emergency.

MK Rabbi Yisrael Eichler welcomed the cooperation and implementation of the Committee’s recommendations by the government, transport, police, the minister of religious affairs and the CEO who devoted days and nights to prepare “Operation Meron”. He called on the public to buy bus tickets throughout the week and not at the last minute. He also called on passengers to respect and honor the spirit of good drivers.

Another hearing will be held after Lag B’omer to draw conclusions, with hope that the public petitions will seek to congratulate the successes rather than complain about the failures again.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)