Car attack at Jerusalem's Chords Bridge
Car attack at Jerusalem's Chords BridgeYonatan Sindel/Flash 90

Meir Turgeman, Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem, spoke to Arutz Sheva on Thursday and strongly condemned the decision to place security barriers at roughly 300 bus stops throughout the capital city.

The decision was made by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan (Likud) on Monday in the aftermath of a horrific car attack, that left 14 people wounded right across from Jerusalem's iconic Chords Bridge. The project is to take a month and cost two million shekels (over half a million dollars).

"The residents (of Jerusalem) will not be deterred and will not fear from these barbarians who are trying to disrupt life in this city," vowed Turgeman.

"Yesterday we started putting barriers at bus stops - I'm embarrassed by that. The state of Israel needs to do everything so that the residents in Jerusalem will feel comfortable going to and visiting any place without living under defense. The defense needs to be there," he said, indicating the Arab areas the attackers hail from.

Suggesting an alternative to the barriers, Turgeman said, "I wouldn't let them leave their houses and villages. We are far too humane and considerate of them, and we pay for it with lives."

"They come here to murder children, to harm us as Jews, and I think that the government needs to take responsibility and end it."

The deputy mayor offered a suggestion to Netanyahu, saying, "in stead of his decision to put barriers on the stops, let him put barriers around the villages that the terrorists come from and try to murder us again and again - we don't need to be defended, they are the ones who need to defend themselves."

The talk of limiting the freedom of movement in Arab villages does in fact have historical precedent, as Israel's first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion instituted a curfew on Arab villages in his time, despite being a leader of the political left.

Turgeman spoke about how the current wave of Arab terror has focused in on the capital, saying, "they understood that Jerusalem isn't like anywhere else in Israel."

"Here there's a different significance and all their radicals tell them: 'come to Jerusalem, do the attacks in Jerusalem,' because they know that here is the very heart of the state of Israel, it's the center of the Jewish people, and therefore the attacks here have a different significance."

Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is largely credited with setting off the current terror wave back in mid-September, when he praised every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem "for Allah," and called to use all means to block "filthy" Jews from the Temple Mount.

"We need to take positions that are a lot stricter, a lot firmer in order to solve this problem," Turgeman concluded.