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RR RUEHWEB

DE RUEHTV #2505/01 3101804
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 051804Z NOV 08
FM AMEMBASSY TEL AVIV
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 9093
INFO RUEHJM/AMCONSUL JERUSALEM 0767

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. 
 
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