JERUSALEM — A haredi activist said Sunday that he would retract his petition to the High Court of Justice in which he claimed Ashkenazi parents in the West Bank town of Immanuel were practising ethnic discrimination by refusing to send their daughters to a school that also had Sephardi students.

Some of the haredi men heading to jail as a result of the order by Israel’s Supreme Court are carried by the crowd last week at a mass protest by tens of thousands of haredim in Bnei Brak.     [Flash90 photo]

Rabbi Yoav Lalum had originally petitioned the court to end discriminatory practices at the Beit Yaakov girls school, but he signed an agreement Sunday to allow the case to be arbitrated by a rabbinical court, which would ostensibly turn the issue back into an internal haredi dispute.

Rabbi Lalum advised a private Jerusalem rabbinical court that he is committed to accepting its arbitration ruling in his dispute over the school, which pits him against a group of Slonim Chassidim, the dominant sect among the parents opposing reintegration of the school.

He also said he is committed to withdrawing the petition to the High Court on condition that the chassidic group reunify the separate educational tracks at the school for the upcoming school year as the High Court had required after receiving a petition from a group of Sephardi parents who wanted to end the school’s discrimination against their daughters.

At the school, the Slonim Chassidim kept their daughters separate from the Sephardi girls, going so far as to have separate entrances and a dividing wall through the school’s courtyard.

The Ashkenazi parents have insisted that they are not racist, but want to keep the classrooms segregated – as they have been for years – on the grounds that the Sephardi families are not religious enough.

The High Court ruled last Tuesday that 43 sets of parents who defied the integration efforts by instead keeping their daughters home from school were to face two-week jail sentences. The parents were required to either return their daughters to school and refrain from discrimination, or face jail time.

Thirty-five men, fathers of the Ashkenazi girls in the segregated school, reported to the Maasiyahu prison in Ramle Thursday evening to serve their two-week sentence, in accordance with the ruling.

The High Court on Sunday postponed by two days its ruling on 24 haredi mothers from Immanuel who failed to report for their two-week term last week on charges of violating the court order. The prosecution told the court it would not object to revoking the mothers’ prison sentences.

Haredi demonstrators thronged the streets of Jerusalem earlier Thursday to protest the Supreme Court order to integrate the Ashkenazi and Sephardi girls in the school. Thousands more rallied in Bnei Brak, near Tel Aviv, where the population is mostly haredi.

The rally in Jerusalem was also meant to escort to jail the 43 sets of haredi Ashkenazi parents from Immanuel beginning their two-week sentence for not informing the court in writing by Wednesday that they would abide by the desegregation order. The parents entered jail late Thursday afternoon.

Haredi authorities had ordered yeshivot closed on Thursday in order for the students to participate.

The protesters held signs reading “We choose Torah,” “High Court against the people” and “God will rule for all eternity,” as well as “Flotilla terrorists free! Students’ parents to jail.”

More than 10,000 police and Border Guard officers were deployed throughout the country to prevent violence, according to reports.

The parents’ entrance to the jail was delayed throughout the day Thursday, as groups and individuals attempted to mediate between the parents and the court. The jail sentences were ordered after parents failed to desegregate the school.

The case has gone through months of court hearings, rulings and mediation, culminating in the court’s ultimatum last week.

Parents asked to serve their sentences on different weeks so that one parent could take care of the children at home.

The court allowed this and also exempted the mothers of children with special needs and overturned the term of one mother who signed an agreement to comply with the court’s ruling.

With files from Ha’aretz.