This freeze is far more extensive than any of the previous ones mandated by the Israeli government under pressure from the Americans to bring the Palestinians to the negotiating table.
Because since October 7, essentially zero construction has been done in any of the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.
At first, Israel blocked all Palestinians from working, because of the obvious security concerns brought about on October 7.
Then IDF Central Command published strict policies to allow Palestinian workers to enter construction sites and industrial areas. No phones are allowed on site and armed security guards must be at each construction site. But residents of the settlements are stopping anyone trying to bring in Palestinians even under these conditions, acutely aware that the workers in the communities near Gaza were often acting as spies for Hamas and they do not want their communities to be attacked the way those in the Gaza envelope are.
But meanwhile, Palestinians are not working. Their economy is tanking. They want to work.
So we have a bizarre situation where it is the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria who prefer a settlement freeze because they refuse to have Palestinian potential terrorists in their communities, and the Palestinians themselves who want to work. And they have no problem building Jewish-owned houses in the territories.
Which brings up the other huge irony: this means that the Palestinians have always had the option of creating and enforcing a settlement freeze - and they preferred to work for the hated, evil Israeli Jewish "settlers."
This is the sort of thing the media is simply not reporting. Journalists are uncomfortable reporting things that contradict their narratives, and they'd rather keep something so big as a settlement freeze, and so ironic as Palestinians wanting to build Jewish houses, unreported.
(h/t Ahron)
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There is a possible out-of-the-box solution, though.
A surprisingly large percentage of Latinos in the Americas have Jewish DNA, descended from crypto-Jews fleeing Spain during the Inquisition.
Many Mexicans are skilled laborers in construction.
As the USA is overrun with illegal immigrants, perhaps a program to identify (via DNA testing and interviews) any Mexicans who are interested in working in Israel who might also be interested in exploring their Jewish heritage, could be mounted. It should be done in Mexico itself.
Obviously there are a lot of logistics and halachic issues involved, but would it be better for Israel to import laborers who have an affinity with the Jewish people, even if only latent?
