Elad Mayor Promises Building in Response to Massacre

Yisrael Porush, mayor of Elad, the hometown of Elad Salomon, Hy”d, who perished in the Leil Shabbos massacre, promised the city will respond to the tragedy with a massive building program.

“We in Elad will be here for the family. We will be with you but we will also not let this pass without a response. We will double and triple the size of Elad,” Porush told thousands of mourners at the levayah Sunday.

In fact, concrete plans for an expansion of Elad were revealed late last week by Ministry of Construction and Housing Yoav Galant, who said he is working on an agreement for 12,500 new homes in the chareidi city located near Rosh HaAyin and Petach Tikvah, Globes reported Sunday.

The so-called “roof agreement” envisions an approximate doubling of the city’s current population of 45,000.

“The roof agreement in Elad is an important breakthrough,” Galant said. “Israel needs a million housing units in the next 20 years. Twenty percent of these housing units have to be for the chareidi sector. We recently established a section for chareidi affairs, at the recommendation of the members of the chareidi political parties. We have to solve the problems by building chareidi cities, and by adding housing units in heterogeneous cities.”

The Ministry of the Interior boundaries committee has decided to establish a joint industrial zone for Elad and the Drom Hasharon Regional Council between Highway 444 and Highway 6. The industrial zone is slated to include 1.5 million square meters of commercial and industrial space, which is likely to support additional housing units.