For many years, East Jerusalem has been suffering from disgraceful neglect and deprivation and outright discrimination compared with West Jerusalem. The neglect is prominent, inter alia, in the area of transportation in the neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. The Jerusalem Municipality has recently taken new steps increasing the parking problem in the streets of East Jerusalem.
On March 5, 2015,
HaMoked wrote to Nir Barkat, the Mayor of Jerusalem, to demand the immediate installation of parking meters in the neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. HaMoked explained that it had recently learned there were no parking meters there, even in streets with paid parking. In addition, the municipality had stopped the use of paper parking stubs that could be bought at various stores, allowing payment for parking only through an EasyPark electronic appliance or via cell phone applications – both options unavailable to a large portion of the population in East Jerusalem.
In a
second letter sent that day, HaMoked raised before the Mayor the specific parking difficulty in the vicinity of the building in Wadi al-Joz, housing the Population and Immigration Authority bureau and the employment bureau. Recently, the Municipality decided to charge for parking in the area, but did not install parking meters there. HaMoked explained that this was particularly troublesome for the residents arriving seeking services at the two governmental bureaus, given that they were often required to wait in line for many hours until they settled their affairs there, and could not repeatedly step out to extend the paid parking time, which might lose them their place in the queue at the bureau. Moreover, they might not even be able to re-enter the building after the reception hours are over (when people already in line were still being served). HaMoked therefore requested that the municipality cancel the parking fee near the Wadi al-Joz bureaus or alternatively, set a token parking fee for the entire day.
In its letters, HaMoked demanded that the Mayor instruct the city's parking wardens to stop issuing parking tickets until parking meters were installed in the streets of East Jerusalem and until the issue of the parking lot near the governmental bureaus in Wadi al-Joz is resolved.
