Haaretz, Sep. 4, 2016

The doomsday weapon in the Shabbat-work rail farce is the transportation of soldiers. That was almost the only reason we heard against the scandalous halting of the train service just prior to and post-Shabbat: how will soldiers get to their bases? Not the elderly, not the poor, not laborers and not the sick.

[...] [Soldiers] chase stone-throwing kids and sometimes shoot them at checkpoints; raid a private home in the middle of the night to confiscate a toaster funded by Hamas; stand at checkpoints and select people; and haze an entire refugee camp in order to find three rusty guns and to alleviate their boredom [....]

Without the trains in service, the elderly are more helpless than a 19-year-old soldier [....] Is a soldier’s speedy arrival to their base more important than the arrival of others to their destinations? In the Israel of 2016, the answer is unequivocal and sad.