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World Jewish News
'Obama, leave us out of the freeze'
06.12.2009, Israel The mayor of the haredi town Beitar Illit appealed Sunday to the Obama administration to leave his town out of the building freeze since it was not an ideologically motivated settlement.
"The US is the real boss here, not the Israeli government, therefore we need to convince America that we are not an ideological settlement," said Meir Rubinstein ahead of an emergency meeting that took place Sunday morning in Beitar Illit in response to the building freeze against Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria.
"We should be left out of this building freeze."
Rubinstein said that former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin encouraged the establishment of Beitar Illit as did subsequent Israeli governments on the Right and on the Left. "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?"
Unlike many settlements located beyond the Green Line in Judea and Samaria, Beitar is populated primarily by haredi families who came out a desire to escape the cramped quarters and high prices in the traditional haredi centers of Jerusalem and Bnei Brak.
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?"
JPost.com
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