A few months after the Meron disaster, the Acre Festival, which opened yesterday its 42nd year, is taking place without fire and rescue permits. Firefighters alerted organizers of fire safety deficiencies, the main location of the event remained unapproved. Still, the theater festival opened yesterday.

The Acre International Festival of Other Theater is being held for the 42nd year. Among other things, the artistic program includes hundreds of actors in dozens of theater performances, street performances, and more, with the main venue, the Knights' Halls complex in the Old City unapproved (which was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2002.)

Among the deficiencies found, it became clear, for example, that the Knights' Halls does not have an up-to-date certificate of integrity for a detector system. There is also no confirmation that all the shadows, fabrics, and elements in the knights' halls, in the white hand, and in the Dado community center meet the standards of flame retardancy.

The police stated that they "do not allow and will not allow any event of the festival to take place in the unapproved places until all the defects have been corrected"

The Acre Festival stated that "to the best of our knowledge, we hold the relevant permits to operate the festival. We are currently checking with the authorities in order to settle the issue immediately."

In the heaviest civil disaster in the country's history, which took place during the Rashbi celebrations on the night of Lag B'Omer, on the night of April 29-30, 45 men and children perished and more than a hundred people were injured. This is due to crushing and suffocation caused by severe overcrowding in one of the passages in the compound.