Last Thursday night, while walking near a public prayer house that I usually visit, I was surprised to see some 20 people, some of whom are neighbors, doing illegal construction activities. Those involved destroying a wall and constructing another wall that blocks the back exit from the prayer house - the exit leading to the parking lot lavatories.
The person in charge of the prayer house called the police. A policeman came and told the constructors to stop, so they stopped, but continued after the police went. He called the police again - same result. The policemen refused to arrest them because they said that illegal construction issues must be decided by the municipality first. Since the municipality does not work during the weekend, we had to wait about 2.5 days, during which they built a complete blocking wall with a locked door.
This morning I went to the municipality engineering department. They said that they will examine the issue, but it will take them some time because of the "Corona vacation" and a problem with their computers. During this time, the illegal construction continues unhindered.
Should we, the law-keeping people who use this prayer house, just wait indefinitely until the municipality does its job? Or is there anything else we can do in the meantime? For example, can we:
- Bring our own constructors that will destroy the new illegal wall and return to the previous situation?
- Lockpick the new lock put on the illegal door, so that we can at least use the back passage as we did previously?
- Take away their construction equipment temporarily, in order to slow down their progress?
- Any other options?
