Local activists this month decried a land deal approved by the city of Beit Shemesh benefitting Ultra-Orthodox allies. They say mayor Danny Vaknin took advantage of the deputy mayor's absence from an August 3 city council meeting to get the hotly contested plan approved that very session. The plan drew heavy criticism from virtually all the town's non-Haredi residents, many of them Anglos.
The incident, which one opponent of the mayor deemed "a nasty political trick," is another episode in the ongoing and intricate conflict between secular, national religious as well as moderate and radical Haredi Jews in Beit Shemesh. About eight months ago, the city made headlines when a relatively small group of radical Haredim, many of whom moved from the devoutly religious neighborhoods of Jerusalem and have since become even more extreme, launched a campaign of intimidation, attacking city residents.
The center of the current storm is a piece of land, known as plot 425, on which a local group of Haredim intends to build a religious school. Deputy Mayor Shalom Lerner spent months fighting relentlessly against the allocation of the land to the Haredi group for months.
"There was basically an agreement with the mayor that the issue wouldn't come up before reaching an agreement between the Haredi members and me," Lerner told Anglo File last week. "The moment the mayor knew I wouldn't be at this meeting, he put in the actual decision. That in itself was something not right, not fair, and against all the agreements we made."
Many non-Haredi Beit Shemesh residents claim plot 425 borders on the neighborhoods of the moderate Haredim and the national religious, and demand that the radical Haredim be given another plot of land closer to their neighborhood. But this month's decision meant a victory for the so-called zealots, who are staunchly anti-Zionist and are said to create an atmosphere of religious coercion that makes many residents uneasy.
"The extreme Haredim have in the past not shown tolerance for Jewish life styles other than their own," said David Stern, editor of a local English-language magazine. "People are concerned this will increase points of friction between the national religious camp and this particular extremist group."
Lerner, a mayoral candidate in the upcoming November election who was born in Brazil but went to high school yeshiva in the U.S., had informed the mayor he would be out of town for his mother's yahrzeit and the setting of his father's gravestone. He asked Vaknin to take the decision over the disputed plot off the agenda because he wouldn't be there to oppose it. Vaknin agreed, according to Lerner. "That's how I left, thinking that it had been taken care of," Lerner said. "But what actually happened in the meeting was completely different." Instead of taking the proposition off the agenda himself - as Vaknin usually does - he asked the members of the city council for permission, according to Lerner. Because of opposition from the Haredi members, plot 425 was not taken off the agenda and eventually passed.
Despite several requests, the spokesman for the Beit Shemesh municipality, Yehuda Gur-Arieh, did not respond to the allegations.
"What Vaknin does in Beit Shemesh is sowing conflict," said a local moderate Haredi, who asked to remain anonymous because he was attacked by radical Haredim last year and is concerned about his security. "He goes to the secular and tells them the Haredim are taking over. Then he goes to the Haredim and tells them, look what the secular are doing. He plays out every group against each other." While Vaknin himself officially abstained from the August 3 vote, the members of his party (Likud) voted to pass the proposition, the moderate Haredi man said. "It was a nasty political trick, what Vaknin did."
It is not immediately clear what the actual consequences of the incident will be. Despite approval, the allocation still needs to go through additional reviews by the city engineer and other agencies, said Catriel Lev, a local activist who thinks that it will ultimately be in Mayor Vaknin's power to decide what will happen with the plot. "Everybody knows that [the city agencies] are in some way or another controlled by the mayor's office. If the mayor doesn't want [the allocation], he can probably arrange to have it not approved finally. If he wants to, he can push an agreement with the extremists. But there are still more steps to be taken."
Lerner said he remained optimistic because he knows of the overwhelming support for his position. More than 160 people sent letters to the city objecting to the decision, he told Haaretz on Wednesday. "It's just the first stage and a lot of people still object. I think that at the end of the day my original proposition will happen, which is [the radical Haredim] go to a different plot of land. That makes sense for them, the city, the neighbors and everybody. And I think in the end reason will win out. It is just a shame that it was done in such a way."
Speculating why Mayor Vaknin is apparently in cahoots with the radical Haredim, many in Beit Shemesh point to the upcoming municipal elections. Vaknin, who has been the mayor for 15 years, hasn't officially announced yet that he'll run again, but it is widely assumed he will. "The mayor has lost his political following," said Rabbi Dov Lipman, who supports Lerner for the upcoming mayoral race. "In the opinion of many voters, he has not been actively building Beit Shemesh over the last ten years. As a result, the mayor needs the Haredi vote to remain in power. While most, if not all, extreme Haredim don't even vote, the mayor seems to believe that if he gives in to every Haredi issue - even if it means supporting the extreme Haredim - then the Haredi community will support him in the next election."
