World Pride - WorldPride Jerusalem 2006

WorldPride Jerusalem 2006

The 22nd annual conference of InterPride, held in October 2003 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada with over 150 delegates from 51 cities from around the world in attendance, voted to accept the bid of the Jerusalem Open House to host WorldPride 2006 in the Holy City.

The first attempt to hold WorldPride in Jerusalem was in 2005, however it was postponed until 2006 because of tensions surrounding Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Officially titled, “Love Without Borders,” as a nod to the many barriers within Israel, and for gays and lesbians in other ways, World Pride was a key project of Jerusalem’s Open House, the city’s gay community centre. From the planned starting point of the march on Ben Yehuda Street, participants could see with the naked eye one of the harshest borders ever constructed: a 25-foot concrete wall, called by Israel the “separation barrier” and known to Palestinians as the Apartheid (or Segregation) Wall.

After Jerusalem was selected as the WorldPride 2006 City, the city of Tel Aviv announced that is was cancelling its own annual Pride Weekend in 2006 to make sure that more Israelis attended the main march. As WorldPride started in 2006, the main parade was scheduled for the August 6 but received harsh objection from Israeli religious circles from the offset. However, due to the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, Jerusalem's government cancelled the march, saying there were not enough soldiers to protect marchers. A week of events did take place as scheduled and included five conferences, a film festival, exhibitions, and literary and political events. The parade itself was cancelled but the Jerusalem Open House announced that it would hold a parade on November 10 after reaching an agreement with the police and with the municipality.