Police Open Operation Meron 2026 as the Pilgrimage Is Called Off

Israel Police announced that the commander of its Northern District, Superintendent Meir Eliyahu, had opened the main phase of Operation Meron 2026, the force’s codename for its annual deployment around the Lag BaOmer pilgrimage at Mount Meron in the Galilee. In the announcement the force called on what it described as the public of believers to show personal responsibility and mutual guarantee, a Hebrew phrase for collective responsibility for one another’s safety.

The release itself was unusually thin: a headline, that appeal, and a link to a government page carrying the details. It gave no crowd figures, no road closures and no officer numbers. What follows is context, drawn from published reporting and from the record of the site, rather than from the police statement.

What happens at Meron, and why it needs an operation at all

Mount Meron in northern Israel holds the tomb of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, a second-century sage, and on the Jewish holiday of Lag BaOmer it becomes the focus of the country’s largest annual pilgrimage, with bonfires, all-night celebrations and crowds that in past years have run to 100,000 and more, according to accounts of the site and the holiday. Access is by narrow mountain roads to a compound built up piecemeal over decades.

The disaster that made the operation a national test

On 30 April 2021, 45 men and boys were crushed to death and about 150 people injured at Meron when pilgrims funnelled into a narrow passage with a slippery metal floor leading to stone steps. It was the deadliest civil disaster in Israel’s history. Safety assessments in 2008 and 2016 had already warned that the infrastructure could not carry the crowds. A state commission of inquiry later found that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the then public security minister Amir Ohana, the then police chief Kobi Shabtai and the then religious services minister Yaakov Avitan all bore responsibility, calling the disaster a tragedy whose end was known from the start, the Times of Israel reported in March 2024. Every police operation at Meron since has been measured against that failure.

What reporters described at Meron in 2026

Israeli media covering the same days described a heavily restricted event. Police closed the roads leading to Mount Meron and the mass pilgrimage was called off in light of repeated Hezbollah violations of the ceasefire on the northern border, with checkpoints limiting entry to residents and other authorised people and Border Police deployed in the surrounding forests to stop pilgrims arriving on foot, the Times of Israel reported on 3 May 2026. Home Front Command limits capped outdoor gatherings at 200 people, leaving three approved bonfire lightings of 200 each in place of an event originally authorised for 50,000; police did not evacuate the pilgrims already at the site, and Eliyahu warned publicly against extremist actors trying to create provocations, the same outlet reported on 4 May 2026, the day the police statement was issued.

What the police release did not say

The statement did not explain what the main phase of the operation involved, how many officers were deployed, which roads were affected or how long the restrictions would last. It did not mention the wartime limits on gathering sizes, and it did not describe what would happen to people who reached the site without authorisation. Readers who want that detail have to go to the government page the release linked to, or to news coverage of the same days.