A procession marking the arrival of a new Torah scroll in Beitar Illit. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Thursday to link the haredi-majority city of Beitar Illit in the West Bank directly to Jerusalem through a new road that will shorten commutes between the cities by 15 minutes.

“We’re connecting Beitar Illit to Jerusalem,” Netanyahu said during a visit to Beitar Illit, the second-largest Jewish community in the West Bank.

“There is no government that does more for the settlement in the land of Israel than this government under my leadership,” he said.

The prime minister was in Beitar Illit to break ground on a new neighborhood. Netanyahu delivered his comments at a site that will see more than 1,000 new homes constructed during the next several years, in what will be Beitar Illit’s third hilltop community.

Beitar Illit was founded in the 1990s and is home to more than 50,000 Israelis. In the first century A.D., Jewish military leader Shimon bar Kochba fought Roman armies from the same hilltops after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem.