The disharmony existing between the litvish Degel Hatorah faction and chassidic Agudas Yisrael faction of Yahadut Hatorah in Knesset unfortunately carries over to other areas too including local government.

The latest case reported from Elad scores a victory for Mayor Yisrael Porush of Agudas Yisrael over Councilman Avi Stern from Degel Hatorah. The victory comes after Stern boasted his victory just last week.

The story begins with Porush allocating caravan buildings for a number of mosdos over objections from Avi Stern. Stern, in his capacity as head of the Elad Local Planning Board prevented the caravans from being set into place last week, issuing a stop work order. Stern maintained the caravans in question were already promised elsewhere. This led to a major machlokes between the factions that make up the Ashkenazi chareidi party.

Porush, acting in his capacity as mayor, suspended Stern as head of the planning committee. Degel then turned to an administrative court to issue an injunction against Porush to stop the placement of the caravans. The petition to the administrative court by Degel froze everything pending the court’s ruling, which came on Tuesday, 10 Elul. The court announced its verdict, rejecting Stern’s actions entirely. The court was critical of Stern, who in the eyes of the court prevented placement of caravans in time for the opening of the school year for no apparent reason, questioning the quality of government in Elad.

The court expressed surprise over Stern’s stop work order and the delay caused by his decision and rejected Stern trying to tie the fact that he maintains the caravans were promised elsewhere to this case.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)