Get you, from each one of your tribes, wise men, and understanding, and full of knowledge, and I will make them heads over you.’ (Deuteronomy 1:13)
Israel’s three largest cities, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa, saw their incumbent mayor win the nationwide municipal elections on Tuesday, according to The Times of Israel. Ballots cast by IDF soldiers have yet to be counted.
The closest election was in capital of Jerusalem where incumbent mayor Nir Barkat suffered from low voter turnout but still triumphed. Turnout had dropped from 43% in 2008 to 35.9% Tuesday. Barkat’s opponent, Moshe Lion, who had been endorsed by both foreign minister Avigdor Liberman and Shas’s Aryeh Deri, had a rough night, also doing poorly as head of the Likud-Beytenu’s party list for the city council, apparently garnering just one seat. The Jerusalem race was seen by many as a fight for the character of the city, with Barkat representing its dwindling secular and Modern Orthodox community. When the counting was done, the incumbent mayor won with some 51% of the vote to the challenger’s 45%.
Lion conceded the election at 2:30 a.m., thanking activists and Liberman, in particular, “who made a genuine and real effort to do good for the people of Jerusalem.”
Barkat, speaking an hour later, said it was a very tough campaign, “but tonight the residents of Jerusalem gave us a mandate to lead the city with the same vision, the same path, for another five years.”
As it usually does, the Jerusalem Arab population widely boycotted the elections in protest of an Israeli presence in East Jerusalem.
In Tel Aviv, another incumbent, Ron Huldai defeated Meretz MK Nitzan Horowitz to retain his position. The openly gay Horowitz ran largely on a platform of helping young Tel Avivians realize some of the aspirations of the social justice movement of 2011. The final count left Huldai with 53.1% of the vote and Horowitz with 38.2%. Voter turnout in Tel Aviv stood at 31.5% compared to 35% in 2008.
Huldai told supporters he’d be everyone’s mayor, even those who didn’t vote for him. “Everyone in Tel Aviv-Jaffa is a resident of Tel Aviv-Jaffa, it doesn’t matter if he’s rich or poor, yellow or red, it doesn’t matter what his religion is, or what he does. We are everyone’s city and we will continue to be that same free city that respects everyone who lives here.”
In Israel’s third-largest city, Haifa, Yona Yahav cruised to a solid victory over Yaakov Borovsky (whom he also faced in 2008), winning a third straight term as mayor.
