ISRAELI MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS ON NOVEMBER 11 PREVIEW

UNCLAS TEL AVIV 002505 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PGOV KDEM SUBJECT: ISRAELI MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS ON NOVEMBER 11 PREVIEW NATIONAL ELECTIONS IN FEBRUARY ¶1. SUMMARY Israeli voters go to the polls on November 11 to choose their mayors and local councils in municipal elections across the country, with Kadima -- in its first municipal elections -- making the biggest push of any major party in advance of the February 2009 national elections. Women are expected to make some gains, and despite a Yom Kippur riot in Akko (Acre) that heightened Arab-Jewish tension, races in most Arab communities are expected to revolve around local economic issues and traditional clan politics rather than religious ideology. Trends for the upcoming national election are not readily apparent due to the loose affiliation of many local leaders and local parties with the national parties and the dominance of local issues. Many Knesset members (MKs) begin their political careers as mayors, however, and candidates and parties -- including Kadima and the Green Party -- are hoping to plant a few seeds that could bear fruit in February. END SUMMARY LOCAL ISSUES AND PERSONALITIES, NOT NATIONAL PARTIES, DOMINATE RACES ¶2. Israel holds its municipal elections on November 11. In the Israeli system, all municipalities hold their elections every five years on the same date, except in unusual circumstances. The ties between the national political parties and their local affiliates can be tenuous and, with the possible exception of Jerusalem, local issues dominate to an even greater extent than in the United States. Likewise, citizens typically vote for mayors because of their personal qualities and policies, not their putative party affiliation. An October 2 Jerusalem Post editorial commented that "decisions taken by the country's 260 local authorities can affect our environment, the quality of education and even the value of our real estate more profoundly than the actions of the ministries in Jerusalem" and that "Labor and the Likud, which once vied mightily for each city council seat, only exacerbate the disinterest by no longer bothering to field candidates -- in Jerusalem and plenty of other locales as well." The closest thing to a national issue that could affect a number of local races is the matter of unpaid salaries to municipal workers. But even in this matter, the funds are controlled and allocated by the national government and it is a problem predominantly in the Arab sector. THE ISRAELI SYSTEM ¶3. Local government in Israel is strictly limited by the central government, which must approve most laws and limits the ability of municipalities to generate tax revenue. A representative from the Union of Municipal Authorities told poloff that these budget problems were compounded by a 2007 change in the law that moved control of water revenues from local authorities to a newly created local board and removed profits generated by water sales from the general municipal budget. Among the limitations faced by Israeli mayors is law enforcement, as the Israeli police force is a national body controlled and financed by the central government. As a result, crime is not the local campaign issue in Israel that it is in the United States. (One contact noted that when Giuliani was mayor of New York he "moved the budget around" and added thousands of police officers to clean up the streets -- something local Israeli leaders could not do.) ¶4. Mayors have been elected in direct elections since the 1978 municipal vote. (Previously, mayors had been chosen by municipal councils, and served at their discretion.) Mayors are elected at the same time as the municipal councils, but on a separate ballot from the municipal councils, where voters choose between competing lists of candidates rather than competing individual candidates. Now that they have been freed from subservience to the local councils, and protected by a fixed term, Israeli mayors (and municipal governments) enjoy greater security - and offer greater stability, according to the Union of Municipal Authorities - than the national government and Knesset, which goes to elections with greater frequency. KADIMA LOOKING FOR BIG SHOWING AS PRELUDE TO NATIONAL POLLS ¶5. Kadima's national party organization is working hard on promoting its candidates at the local level in an effort to parlay success in these elections to the national elections scheduled for February 10. Kadima faction chairman Yoel Hasson, who heads the party's municipal elections operations, told Israeli journalists on November 4 that there is no doubt that Kadima will be the ruling party at the municipal level and that voting for his party's candidates this week prepares the electorate to vote for Kadima in February as well. Kadima is leveraging several of its advantages to gain the upper hand in these local elections. The party, as the largest faction in the Knesset, has more money than its competitors and is therefore able to field and support more candidates. Kadima also enters the elections with the advantage of having substantially more incumbent mayors than its chief opponents Likud and Labor. This will be the first municipal elections for Kadima, which was formed when former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon broke from Likud in November ¶2005. ¶6. The Labor, Likud, and SHAS parties have not made local elections a priority. Kadima's opponents are conserving their limited financial resources for the national campaign. For example, the limited overt support Likud has provided for the Jerusalem city council race includes posters prominently featuring party chairman Binyamin Netanyahu, who is flanked by smaller images of two Likud candidates vying for council positions in Jerusalem. SHAS, for its part, is focusing on targeted communities - Jerusalem, Eilat, Beersheba, and Netivot - and is relying on its members to vote in accordance with the endorsements of the party's spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. Labor, which once fielded candidates nationwide, holds only Holon as a power base and lost Givatayim, another former Labor bastion, to Kadima in a by election one year ago. ¶7. Several contacts suggested that the Green Party might be the one to watch. Party leader Peer Wisner is the current Deputy Mayor for Tel Aviv and is a mayoral candidate in that city, and a Haaretz article quoted Green organizer (and former Meretz Deputy Mayor for Tel Aviv) Michael Roeh that the party was aiming to gain at least a third of the council seats in the elections it participates in, and that an element in their favor was that the "big parties have nearly lost all interest in local elections." Kobby Barda, Spokesman and Director of Foreign Relations for the Municipality of Netanya, speculated that if the Green Party had some success in the municipal elections it could give them enough momentum to grab as many as six or 7 seats in the next Knesset if they are able to capture the protest vote that the Pensioners Party garnered in the 2006 elections. Barda offered that every election has one party that makes an impact that has influence beyond its numbers as a popular coalition builder and swing vote, even if that influence lasts for only one administration and the party then slips back into obscurity with the next election. (Some predict the Pensioners Party will disappear completely from the Knesset in the February 2009 national elections, but this party may remain a political force at the municipal level.) Barda characterized the Israel Green Party as much more conservative (on matters such as security) than most European Green Parties that espouse very liberal social and political agendas across the board, and willing to work with whomever forms the next government in order to advance their core environmental agenda. WOMEN BECOME MORE PROMINENT ¶8. Netanya mayor MIRIAM Feierberg (Likud) and Herzliya mayor Yael German (Meretz) are the only two female mayors of Israeli municipalities. (Only ten women have been elected mayor in Israel during its sixty years of existence.) Crime is an issue in both cities, particularly Netanya, which has a reputation (exaggerated by the media, according to Barda) for gangland violence, but both candidates are expected to win reelection, as they can deflect criticism about the crime problem to the Israeli national police. The number of women candidates is up slightly, according to veteran observers, and growing Tel Aviv suburb Raanana could make history by becoming the first Israeli city with a female majority in its municipal council. THE ARAB VOTE ¶9. Thirty nine local and regional councils in Israel are Arab or mixed cities. Of the 241 Arab candidates for mayor, none are women. Elections in Arab communities tend to be contests between competing extended families, with smaller groups joining forces with the dominant clan to a run lists in a particular municipality. The Islamic Movement is the governing party in two Arab cities, Umm el-Fahm and Kafr Kasim. According to a November 7 Jerusalem Post article, a much larger number of Arab municipalities, including Rahat, are run by parties aligned with Kadima, if only for instrumental - i.e. practical - benefits rather than ideological reasons. Tensions between Jews and Arabs in the region have risen since an incident when an Arab man drove his car through a Jewish neighborhood in Acre on Yom Kippur, leading to riots in that city. But shrinking resources and rising poverty suggest that in most Arab communities economic survival is expected to trump ideology as the theme of this election. Indications are that most Arab and Jewish voters will look to someone who can pay the light bill rather than someone who will light the torch for their ideology. HARBINGER OF NATIONAL ELECTIONS? ¶10. Despite Kadima's push at the local level, the focus of Israel's municipal elections is on "bread and butter" issues and typically do not accurately foretell national electoral results. Many mayoral contests include candidates who are selling their personal image rather than that of the party in which they belong. Furthermore, party affiliations for local politicians are more fluid than for those on the national level, leaving some doubt as to whether candidates actually reflect the priorities of their national party. For example, Dov Khenin, an MK with the Hadash party (formerly "communist" but now a mixed Jewish-Arab party on the far left),is running for mayor of Tel Aviv as a member of "A City for All of Us," which is a coalition that includes Likud and even ultra-Orthodox members on its list. Despite the disconnect between election results in municipal and national elections, many MKs begin as mayors, and with Kadima hoping to flex its muscle, and the Green Party making a serious effort to build momentum toward the national elections, trends could still emerge that will shape the national campaigns and February general elections. ********************************************* ******************** Visit Embassy Tel Aviv's Classified Website: http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/nea/telaviv You can also access this site through the State Department's Classified SIPRNET website. ********************************************* ******************** CUNNINGHAM