Bet Shemesh might be helping Beitar get the building freeze exemption

The building freeze has everyone up in arms. Even the normal Yesha council "collaborators" are calling for everyone in Yesha communities to build. There has never been a building boom like the one going on now during the current freeze.

Unfortunately it is likely to be temporary, like to the tune of a couple days. I expect the government will start cracking down on people breaking the freeze in the near future.

Aside form just telling people to build, different communities are doing whatever they can to circumvent the orders in legal ways, such as finding loopholes, having construction started to the stage that it is not included in the freeze, requesting an exemption, etc.

The haredi communities in yesha are no exception. They have gone to 2 claims that in the past have brought them partial success in circumventing general work stoppage orders.

1. The order affects them far worse than any other community because of their high level of growth - lots of kids, weddings, etc.
2. They are not living in Yesha for ideological reasons, but practical reasons.

While I never understood why reason number 2 would ever be a cause for the authorities in question to grant the exemption, if ti works it is fine by me. Whatever excuse they can find to get those in charge to let them build is great.

The mayor of Beitar, Meier Rubinstein, made an appeal to the Obama administration, because it is they who are behind the freeze, to grant Beitar an exemption:

"They pushed us to come here. They gave us no other choice. We did not necessarily want to settle in a place beyond the Green Line. But we had no other options inside the Green Line.

"Even in Beit Shemesh secular Jews are trying to stop us from living there," added Rubinstein, referring to recent controversy surrounding building tenders reserved for haredi-only residents.

"America does not want us either. They won't give us a Green Card. We are in a worse situation than Sudanese refugees. They don't want us in Israel they don't want us in America, where are we supposed to go?"

[...]

Rubinstein said that his family and others who made up the seed of Beitar Illit came to the Land of Israel long before there was a state and lived for generations in Jerusalem.

"We are true Zionists. We came because of our religious faith, we are not ideologically motivated."

Beitar Illit and Modi'in Illit are the nation's two largest haredi-only towns and both are positioned just beyond the Green Line.

Both towns also have the highest fertility rates in Israel and one of highest in the entire world.

A mother in Beitar and Modi'in has on average eight children, according to a report entitled Patterns of Fertility in 2006, released last week by the Central Bureau of Statistics.

"What can we tell a family who bought a small two-room apartment ten years ago as a newly-wed couple and who now has eight children," said Rubinstein.

"They can't even expand their existing apartment, let alone build another apartment."

Rubinstein said there were dozens of families who will be financially ruined by the present building freeze.

"People have already paid building contractors and were planning to enter their new houses in coming months. They signed rental agreements or even sold their homes in with the expectation that they would soon be moving in.

"Where will all these families live now?"