Nir Barkat at his mayoral victory celebration in Jerusalem on 11 November.
On
Tuesday, 11 November, Israel
held municipal elections across the country, including lists for mayoral and
local council races. What can we learn from these elections?
First,
that the local problems and political struggles are usually not directly connected
to the national political challenges, and that trends in the municipal
elections do not necessarily reflect national political trends. In most of the
races, political parties were absent from the contests, and in the same lists
one could find members of parties which are opposed in national politics.
Second, that the trend of low voting percentages in the large and medium sized
cities continued, as well as the very high level of participation by
Palestinian citizens of Israel.
The
two main cities, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem,
deserve, however, special attention. In Tel Aviv, the incumbent mayor (non-affiliated
but with ties to the Labor Party) was reelected, but MK Dov Kheinin, the left-wing
candidate got around 35 percent of the votes. Through an aggressive and
intelligent campaign, this socialist leader succeeded in getting the support of
large sectors of the population, in particular among the youth and in the poorer neighborhoods. Kheinin is known for his
deep commitment to environmental issues and to the defense of the weakest
populations. Mayor Huldai reflects Tel Aviv: a very rich town, dynamic and
prosperous but, as it is always in neo-liberal societies, with a large poor
periphery, totally neglected and forgotten by the elected representative of the
wealthy. As a whole, these victims of Tel Aviv’s neo-liberal politics voted for
the candidate of the Left.
The
big surprise, however, occurred in Jerusalem,
where the Ultra-Orthodox religious mayor was replaced by a right-wing secular
candidate. The votes in Jerusalem were clearly
polarized between religious and secular Jews and, for once, the non-religious
public did mobilize itself, including the many who have already emigrated to
Tel Aviv but kept their Jerusalem
residency.
Another
surprise in Jerusalem was the low result for Russian oligarch Arkadi Gaydamak,
who, despite the huge amount of money invested in the campaign, didn’t get even
five percent of the votes. And these votes came mostly from the tiny minority
of Arab residents of East Jerusalem that didn’t follow the national line of
boycotting an election in the occupied/annexed city of Jerusalem.
The
defeat of Gaydamak confirms that voters cannot, as a rule, be bought, and the
billionaire will have to take this into consideration when he decides what to
do for the national elections in February 2009.
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