Shai Alon
Shai AlonHadas Parush/FLASH 90

The head of the Beit El local council, Shai Alon, joins the protest voiced by his fellow council heads in Judea and Samaria on the ongoing construction freeze.

Committees convening this week will approve plans to build in Judea and Samaria, but leaders say the construction is a small token meant to cover up the continued quiet construction freeze of the last eight years.

"This is unbelievable; Beit El is a community of 6,500 residents, and for over ten years we have not built a single house here," Alon says.

He wonders, "Do I have to deal only with existing residents and not provide solutions for the next generation or new residents? This is an illogical reality.

Alon is fed up with the Netanyahu government's promises: "We received explanations from here to the United States; they told us to wait for the change of government, we waited and waited and every time we were made more promises and more promises. We were told that after the visit there would be marketing and a tender, and now we get a pathetic, limited, and illogical list that has barely a thousand plus housing units, some of which are not even new."

"What's now being built in Efrat and Karnei Shomron are from plans okayed 15 years ago," he says. "This is a reality that can not be lived with. And I am no longer even talking about what they promised us before the destruction of the Ulpana neighborhood - to build 300 housing units. Not one was built."

Shai Alon looks at the list of houses that will be discussed this week by the planning committees and says that "it is only the regularization of existing homes, there is not even one new house.That's why we have to make this protest.G-d is running the world and with G-d's help, good things will happen.Unfortunately, at the moment we are not there."