Friday Morning Roadwork on Route 40/6 Snarls Traffic for 25 Minutes

Drivers on Route 40, the continuation of Route 6 near the Pura Reserve and Beit Kama in southern Israel, were stuck in traffic for about 25 minutes on Friday morning at 9:30 a.m. The delay came just a day after mass protests by Agudat Israel and the Jerusalem Faction had already caused major gridlock across the country in response to the arrest of ultra-Orthodox draft evaders.

This time, however, the obstruction was not a protest but work by Netivei Israel, the state roads company formerly known as Maatz, which had blocked part of the road to remove work signs. Reporter Liat Ron said she was on her way to visit a patient at Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba when she was unexpectedly trapped in the jam.

According to the report, there did not appear to be any urgent infrastructure emergency justifying such a disruption on a short and busy Friday morning. The article says drivers watched in frustration as Netivei Israel crews slowly collected cones and signs reading, “Work on the Road,” and some asked the blocking crews to clear the signs themselves so traffic could resume.

When asked why the work had to be done that morning, why it was not carried out at night when roads are usually empty, and why drivers were not even apologized to, Netivei Israel did not provide a detailed explanation. The company said only that the activity was maintenance work repairing a bridge expansion joint, carried out with police coordination and approval.