Secular Defeats Ultra-Orthodox in Jerusalem

By ISABEL KERSHNER

November 12, 2008

JERUSALEM — A secular, hawkish entrepreneur on Tuesday defeated an ultra-Orthodox, equally hawkish member of Parliament in a hotly contested race for mayor of Jerusalem, according to results announced early Wednesday.

As usual, the election was largely boycotted by Palestinians, who comprise a third of the city’s population.

The secular entrepreneur, Nir Barkat, 49, a self-made high-tech millionaire, has raised expectations in Jerusalem, the troubled capital and a city highly symbolic and holy to Muslims, Christians and Jews. He has pledged to revitalize and significantly develop the city, Israel’s poorest, and has said he would like to multiply the number of tourists visiting here from one or two million a year to 10 million.

Some left-leaning Jerusalem residents have questioned how likely he is to achieve such goals without a political solution for the divided city that would involve the kind of compromises that Mr. Barkat rejects.

Mr. Barkat won 52 percent of the vote, according to official results based on count of all ballots cast. He defeated Meir Porush, 54, a former deputy mayor and deputy minister of housing from the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party, by nine percentage points.

“This victory,” Mr. Barkat said in a predawn victory speech, “belongs to all those who love and hold dear this special, amazing city, the eternal capital of the Jewish people.”

Jerusalem will now have a secular local leader after five years under Uri Lupolianski, Jerusalem’s first ultra-Orthodox mayor. Mr. Barkat lost to Mr. Lupolianski in the 2003 mayoral race and sat in opposition on the city council for a few years.

Local elections took place in all the major cities and rural councils across Israel on Tuesday, but the voting in Jerusalem as always had extra significance, even though it is the central government that will ultimately decide the city’s political fate in negotiations with the Palestinians.

Jerusalem is Israel’s largest city, and its most complex and sensitive, both politically and religiously.

Of the population of 740,000, the Palestinian third is made up mostly of Muslims who live in the east of the city — territory that Israel conquered, then annexed, as a result of the 1967 war. The Palestinians demand those areas as the capital of their future state.

“There is not one example in the world,” Mr. Barkat told reporters recently, “where a divided city works.”

Palestinians in East Jerusalem have consistently boycotted city elections in the belief that participating would be tantamount to recognizing Israeli sovereignty. The bulk of Palestinian voters stayed away this time, as well.

As a result, the election was fought among Jewish voters, along the Orthodox-secular divide.

A third to a half of the Jews in Jerusalem are ultra-Orthodox, disciplined voters bent on strengthening their own institutions and their hold on political power.

Although tensions between religious and secular Jews were kept relatively in check during Mr. Lupolianski’s tenure, he was widely perceived as a weak and generally ineffective mayor.

The city faces significant problems. Expensive housing and a lack of jobs have led tens of thousands of Jewish residents to leave in recent years. Streets are clogged with traffic and are dirty. A recent survey found Jerusalem ranked last of Israel’s major cities in livability.

In the struggle for meager resources, secular activists portrayed this election as a crucial, possibly last chance to win back city hall from the ultra-Orthodox.

Both of the leading candidates campaigned on platforms of building affordable housing and trying to stem the exodus from the city. Another mayoral candidate, Arcadi Gaydamak, a Russian-born billionaire who barely speaks Hebrew and is on trial in absentia in Paris on charges that include arms trafficking and money laundering, won less than 4 percent of the vote.