Sami Abu Shihadeh, the Arab member of Yaffa (Jaffa) municipal council, said the residents held the protests in his city and Umm Al-Fahem, Shafa’amr, Baqah Al-Gharbiyeh, Tarsheeha, Al-Taybeh, Nazareth, Negev and Al-Teireh against the bill, proposed by Knesset member Anastasia Michaeli of rightist Yisrael Beiteinu party.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to bring the bill to a vote by his Cabinet on Sunday after he failed to muster enough support to pass it at a session last week. Explaining his backing for the bill, Netanyahu said there was “no need to be more liberal than Europe,” in an apparent reference to the 2010 Swiss law that forbids mosques from having minarets.
If approved, the new law would ban loudspeakers from all mosques in Israel.
Shihadeh said that the Arab residents will hold similar protests at the time of Sunday's Israeli Cabinet meeting. Israel has more than seven million citizens, of which its Arab minority accounts for about 20 percent, mostly Muslim.
Israeli President Shimon Peres has said he is ashamed of the bill and others like it. “This is simply a march of folly … I am personally ashamed there are attempts being made to pass such laws.” Israel doesn’t “have to raise the ire of all the Muslims in the Arab world against us”, Peres said.
Michaeli said that the call for prayer deprives Israelis of sleep since it is “broadcast very loudly with the help of speakers and amplifiers.” She added that she received complaints from Israelis living in mixed Arab-Jewish cities.
She added that “when families, the elderly, small children, and working people who need their rest are forced to wake up in the early hours of the morning because of the muezzin’s call, we are talking about a clear violation of the law.”
