A small, almost unknown neighborhood built close to the city of Beitar Illit has been making headlines again and again in recent days. The neighborhood is called Hadar Beitar, and its electricity has been cut off for several weeks, and the security provided by the Beitar Illit municipality has also been discontinued.
According to a senior official in the Beitar municipality, these are illegal squatters that the administration intends to evict. This is also the reason the electricity was cut off. The electricity company discovered that these are pirated connections, in addition to the fact that the place is built in an unstandardized manner and an electrical connection can be dangerous. According to him, the municipality has been concerned for street lighting for years, but the residents have become accustomed to connecting to the lighting piratedly. An opinion by the municipality's legal advisor, Oded Ben Ami, states that if the municipality continues to provide the electricity, the charge will become a personal charge. When it comes to about fifty thousand NIS per month, there is no way to continue doing so.
""The celebration is over, the residents have been playing with the municipality for years," says the same senior official.
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Ironically, the mere fact of bringing the discussion to the media may, it seems, hasten the evacuation of the neighborhood by the administrator, but on the other hand, the residents themselves are interested in spreading the events in the media anyway.
The municipality's power cut is heartbreaking on the one hand, as entire families and their wives are sitting in houses without electricity connections, but on the other hand, the municipality's hands are tied from helping, as mentioned. However, this conflict has long since become a weapon of attack by opposition figures. Unofficial sources close to the Beitar Illit municipality claim: "The opposition is constantly looking for Meir Rubinstein, the mayor, this story came to them at the right time." On the other hand, opposition figures claim: "Mayor the"He who is alienated and ignores human suffering, should not complain about those who complain.".
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Hadar Beitar was established in 1988, even before the city of Beitar Illit itself was established. According to the residents, since then the moshav has been budgeted by the Ministry of Defense, at NIS 52,000 per year, with the amount including all expenses – electricity, sewage, water and security. The municipality has difficulty understanding the claim, since according to them the place is not at all familiar, and even from the Ministry of Defense's perspective, "there is no such neighborhood." So where do the budgets come from?
Until about a year ago, residents would transfer their electricity payments to the municipality, which in turn would transfer the money to the electric company. It was only when the electric company discovered that a huge debt had accumulated in the fund that it began to 'sniff' in the area, revealing that there were quite a few pirate connections. The electric company refused to connect these unconventional connections to the electricity grid in a standard manner, claiming that they were substandard construction and that the connections would pose a danger.
In the next stage, when the debt reached enormous proportions, the electric company disconnected the electricity from the moshav, on the eve of Passover.
At the same time, there have been many recent power outages on various streets in the city, which led to a meeting between the mayor and senior officials at the electric company, which rushed to thoroughly inspect every pirated connection, completely disconnecting it from the power supply. This happened to many warehouse apartments in the city, as well as to the moshav, where, on Passover Eve, to this day, about 20 families are living without electricity, without hot water, and without charging their cell phones.
According to the residents, this is a moshav located about 300 meters from Wadi Fokin, and that the very fact that they live there prevents the wadi from flooding the area in the direction of Beitar. In the future, if Hill C is built (currently only Hills A and B are built in Beitar), it will come very close to Hadar Beitar, but so far the Israeli governments have not approved the expansion, for international reasons. Today, the street closest to the moshav is Rabbi Shach Street.
The residents claim that they are currently experiencing a complete lack of security, after the municipality stopped sending patrol vehicles to the area, as it had done over the years. One of the residents we spoke to said: "The children are afraid to fall asleep at night, both because of the prevailing darkness, which candlelight cannot dispel, and because of the proximity to hostile villages in the area. Is the municipality waiting for a security incident like the murder of the Fogel family in Itamar, to realize that it is obligated to send us guards?""
According to him, "The residents wanted and want to reach a payment arrangement and transfer the clock to the electric company so that the residents themselves will take care of the budget from the Ministry of Defense directly to the electric company, but the municipality refuses.".
The municipality, as mentioned, claims otherwise, explaining that there is no legal possibility of connecting electricity to a "compound of tents and makeshift structures – caravans and shacks." Regarding the issue of security, the municipality says that the municipal hotline is conducting routine patrols of the site, as always.
