Landmark ruling restores Western Wall's status as a national symbol - National Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper:
Not only did [Judge Moshe Sobel] uphold the magistrate's court ruling that the five women arrested earlier this month by the police for praying at the wall wearing talithot (prayer shawls) were not "disturbing the peace," but his reasoning for this heralds no less than a revolution in the way the Western Wall is run.
Since 1967, the entire area by the Wall has been regarded by authorities for all intents and purposes a synagogue, run on strict Orthodox lines. Sobel's ruling that the "local custom" regulating behavior by the wall is not according to an Orthodox interpretation but a "pluralistic-secular-national" one is a total rejection of the status-quo and restores the Western Wall's status as a national symbol - one that belongs to every Israeli citizen and every Jew from around the world.
Historically, the Western Wall only became a 24/7 open-air synagogue over the last four decades and by any religious standard, the site has no more holiness that any other place in Jerusalem outside the Temple Mount.