Yair Lapid
Yair LapidHillel Maeir/TPS

Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid on Sunday blasted Interior Minister Aryeh Deri, after he invoked the “Supermarket Bill” in order to outlaw Shabbat commerce in a slew of cities across Israel.

The Knesset approved the "Supermarket Bill" in January, granting the Interior Minister the powers to disqualify municipal bylaws promoted by the local authorities, effectively enabling the minister to shut down supermarkets that had been operating on the Sabbath with permission from the local authority.

"They will not tell us how to live, where to buy and what to do on Shabbat. Just as he did on the issue of core subjects, draft, surrogacy, and the transfer of huge budgets to yeshivas, Netanyahu continues to cave to the haredim in everything. Cynical politics is dismantling Israeliness from within and we will fight it everywhere," Lapid said.

Deri had earlier ordered the cities of Modiin, Givatayim, Herzliya, Holon, and Rishon Lezion to cease allowing business to operate on the Jewish day of rest. Those cities approved bylaws permitting businesses to operate on Shabbat before the approval of the Supermarket Law.

Deri's decision to nix Shabbat commerce marks a change in policy, as he had consistently denied that he would enforce the legislation after it passed in January.

MK Bezalel Smotrich (Jewish Home) welcomed Deri’s move on Sunday, saying, "The State of Israel is a Jewish state and Shabbat is one of its cornerstones. The people of Israel gave the entire world the Sabbath as a spiritual value and a social value of preventing slavery and excessive servitude to work and materialism.”

"There are six days for shopping and for making a living, and there is one day for the family, for rest, for the spirit and the soul," he added.