The Pride Parade in Beersheba

The story

The pride parade in Beersheba was held for the first time under that name in June 2017, organized by the Pride House and with the participation of about four thousand marchers; at its end a pride event was held, produced by the Beersheba municipality, at which the mayor gave a speech in which he called on the residents to tolerance and to acceptance of the other in a city of communities. The road to there is long. On 2 August 2009, following the shooting attack at Barnoar in Tel Aviv, the Pride House held a protest rally and a silent procession from the plaza of the district court, through the municipal market and the pedestrian mall and up to the Pride House, in which about four hundred people took part — and the source sees in that procession the first pride parade in the city. The first municipal pride event was held in 2010 with the help of the municipality, and about six hundred people came to it. In 2011 the event took place on the roof of the youth center and not in the streets, at the demand of the municipality, which helped to fund it. In 2012 the event came down for the first time to street level and more than one thousand five hundred people took part in it; in 2013 about two thousand came, and it was the third largest in Israel. In 2014 no event was held, because the city was under rocket attack. In 2016 the municipality refused to fund the parade, and the Pride House asked the police for permission to march on Rager Boulevard, one of the main streets, which had already been closed that year three times for other processions. The permission was given and then was revoked. The Pride House and the Association for Civil Rights petitioned the High Court of Justice, and a day before the date the judges determined that the parade would not pass along the main street but on a side route shorter than one hundred meters — about eighty meters on Ha-Shalom Street, a crossing of Shazar Boulevard and entry into the municipality plaza — on the basis of intelligence information that the police presented. The Pride House cancelled the parade and held in its place a protest demonstration, in which about two thousand five hundred people took part.

• Communities
• Beersheba