Five years ago, the Palestinian east Jerusalem neighborhood of Kfar Ekev was cut off from the rest of the city by the security fence, and municipal services completely ceased. Now, finally, the neighborhood has gained some token acknowledgment by the city's government in the form of....

400,000 NIS worth of new trash bins! Sixty in all, to be precise. It ain't the light rail exactly, but it's a fresh-smelling start.

Hopefully, unlike the reliably short-lived municipal trash bins of Meah Shearim and Geulah, nobody will set these on fire as the opening salvo in healthy municipal political dialogue....

Photo of Kfar Ekev's new fleet of dumpsters courtesy of the Jerusalem Municipality.

Well, there is hope in the air. It seems that Jerusalem's citizens have finally got it together, taken their city back, and will no longer settle for the status quo. Congratulations Mr. Barkat- with Jerusalem being ranked last in livability among Israel's 15 largest cities in a recent survey conducted by The Marker and Ha'ir, it seems that you have your work cut out for you. Poverty, bad education, a barely working workforce and the all too talked about brain drain of promising youngsters leaving the city for greener groves are just a few of the problems on your plate. There's also the light rail of course. But you bring us hope Mr. Barkat, with your ambitious plans to increase the paltry 8 million NIS budget for cultural activities, renew the city's educational system, rain hellfire on the mismanagement of the light rail, bring millions more tourists to Jerusalem in the coming years, creating jobs, and once again establishing Jerusalem in its rightful place as the center of the world.

Mayoral results

Nir Barkat: 50.77% - 112604 votes

Meir Porush: 42.05% - 93257 votes

Arcadi Gaydamak: 3.51% - 7789 votes

Dan Birron: 3.17% 1087

City Council results

The following results are estimates based on the numbers each party received. To garner a seat on city council a party needed approximately 8000 votes. Surplus votes from other parties and votes from soldiers will alter the landscape. There are several seats still up in the air.  We'll be keeping this page updated throughout the day.

Yahadut HaTorah/Agudat Yisrael/Degel HaTorah: 53,550 = 8 seats

Nir Barkat's Jerusalem Will Succeed: 39,133 = 6 seats

Shas: 29,824 = 4 seats 

National Religious Party: 21,290 = 3 seats

Meretz: 17639 = 3 seats 

Yerushalayim Beitenu (Jerusalem is our Home): 9,451 = 2 seats

Hitorirut Yerushalayim (Wake Up Jerusalem): 15,658  = 2 seats 

Likud: 8,410 = 1 seat

L'ma'an Yerushalayim: 7734 = 1 seat

Pisgat Ze'ev party: 7627 = 1 seat

Statistics and election results appear courtesy of the Ministry of Interior.

Photo of ballots by Ben Jacobson for Jerusalemite.

Jerusalemite loves the smell of democracy in the morning. And so do the colorful characters of the beloved '70s-vintage bourekas musical Kazablan:

 

Well, actually, they're pretty ambivalent about it. But that's no excuse for you to be. Today is your chance as a citizen of Jerusalem to help direct the city's future. So hie thee to a polling station. If you need help finding one, simply SMS your teudat zehut number to 052-999-1854, and you'll receive a reply informing you of the nearest voting location. Handy!

And if you still need help making up your mind, don't miss all of Jerusalemite's exclusive coverage of the mayoral campaign...

No, just kidding. We're nowhere near seeing a completed light rail. But after years of "work" and the curiously rushed, corner-cutting construction of the Chords Bridge, the train inches closer to becoming a reality (or at least to meeting its next major delay) this week with an agreement between the major parties - the Municipality, the City Pass group, the French contractors and laughing-all-the-way-to-el-banco architect Santiago Calatrava himself - to begin structural and technical tests on the Chords Bridge in preparation for track-laying.

Wait. What? It took five months following the completion and dedication of the 220 million NIS bridge for the people behind it to get together and make sure they could fit some train tracks on it? Did anyone ask Calatrava if he made sure during the design phase to accommodate the weight of a fully loaded train as well, or will that require some more tests down the line? 

And while this international gaggle ponder whether the addition of train tracks will cause the Chords Bridge to fall apart into its component spans, cables and misplaced hopes, track-laying work on Jaffa Road has now made it all the way up to the Machane Yehuda market. Perhaps having learned from the terrible effect construction had on the street's businesses in the city center, the Municipality actually bothered to meet with Machane Yehuda merchants to determine the best way to keep the market lively and facilitate pedestrian traffic while the tracks go in. 

And now, Jerusalemite will take bets as to when the Jaffa Road tracks meet up with the soon-to-be-laid tracks that will emerge from the pile of rubble formerly known as the Chords Bridge. 2015? 2020? The Messianic Era? Let us know.

Photo of Santiago Calatrava's Bridge of Strings by Harry Rubenstein for Jerusalemite.

At 68, musician, TV producer and pub owner Dan Birron is the unlikely face of a political party that once espoused legalizing marijuana as the cornerstone of its platform. Then again, given his long, scraggly hair and chilled out personality, maybe he is the perfect face. Born in Jerusalem when it was still part of Palestine, Birron was recently recruited to be Aleh Yarok's - or, the Green Leaf Party's - main man in Jerusalem. As a third- or fourth-party candidate for mayor, Birron has taken a Ralph Nader-like backseat in the race (to Arkady Gadyamak's Ross Perot). he's not just running on legalizing it, though. With a platform that addresses issues like clean streets, 24/7 public transportation and more funding for the arts, Birron is hoping to at least secure a seat on the city council, and maybe even steal the whole damn thing.

What about Jerusalem culturally makes it ripe for a Green Leaf administration? This is a maybe the first thing, the first item, in our platform. Do you know that the Jerusalem budget for supporting cultural activities is about 8 million NIS a year? In Tel Aviv it's 115 million, in Haifa it's about 80, 84 million. In Rishon Letzion, the orchestra gets more money than all the activities in Jerusalem. We think it's not luxury. It’s a basic need of every human being. And what can I do, when the municipality ignores it? So the first thing to do, maybe, because this is my field - I am a TV director - would be to take care of this.

Please paint a picture for us of Jerusalem with you as her mayor. What kinds of green spaces would you create? How would you balance that with the city's needs for construction development? I have a vision. I cannot say how far I can go, but I wouldn't allow the building of skyscrapers in town - in the center of town. If they want to do that, then please do it in the periphery. But the city of Jerusalem should be preserved. This is an old city and this our tradition and this is the face of our city. During these five last years the city became so dirty, they clean maybe the main streets, but look at the yards of the houses. There should be a fine on everybody who doesn't clean his own yard. Jerusalem should be clean. It should be light and not dark.

If you were in office, how would you improve the city's cultural, nightlife, entertainment and performing arts landscapes? This is my field. I was a TV producer and director and was acting in Jerusalem for many years. But you have to do everything in spite of the municipality. Not only do they not support you, but they are trying to push.... (For more questions with Green Leaf Party mayoral candidate Dan Birron, click here.)

With Jerusalem's municipal elections upon us this Tuesday, Jerusalemite spoke with journalist Avi Fogel, who's been covering the race for City Hall for the local Kol Ha'ir weekly newspaper. Fogel gave us a brief run-down on the candidates, the system and the craziness that is our local government. Although Fogel himself is a relative newcomer to the politics game (his usual beat is local laws and the police that enforce them), he has been eating, sleeping and breathing municipal elections for the past four months.

According to Fogel, Jerusalem's municipal political scene is complex, since "The mayor can't really be involved in what's going on in his own city: He can give his opinion, but that doesn't mean anyone will listen. He can say we won't talk about dividing Jerusalem, but at the end of the day, it's not the mayor's decision, it's the Knesset's decision.... So from a legal standpoint the mayor can't be involved with the city's major political issue. He can only deal with how clean the streets are, or the other services the municipality deals with - but not with the larger issues Jerusalem is facing."

That said, here's his low-down on the three top contenders for the city's top spot:

Nir Barkat

Age: 49

Political accomplishments to date: Barkat has been the opposition leader in the Jerusalem City Council since 2003. A successful businessman, he first entered the political fray four years ago, running for mayor and losing by a small margin. Since then, he's been involved in bringing issues affecting non-charedi Jerusalemites to the table at City Hall. A major opponent of the Bridge of Strings project, Barkat has argued that the money should have been used for education instead. Ha also fought against the decision to over-clothe the Bridge dancers, and was able to bring about some sort of a compromise, but as a member of the opposition, he was more involved in opposing, rather than creating, policy.

Primary platform: Barkat's main issues are education – he wants to allocate more money for the capital's educational infrastructure – and stemming the population drain by strengthening academic institutions, reducing housing prices and providing rent subsidies to university students. Barkat has also promised to attract between 10 and 15 million tourists a year to Jerusalem, opining that the city is not utilizing its full potential as a tourist destination and that increased tourism will equal increased municipal revenues. And, despite the fact that at the end of the day it’s a Knesset decision and not a municipal one, Barkat is throwing the undivided Jerusalem card, establishing a national initiative campaigning against the division.

Cultural platform: "Culture is a big issue for Barkat," says Fogel. "Jerusalem's cultural institutions are currently suffering from a lack of funding, because the municipality hasn't transferred the money they were allocated – i.e. their budgets are not being paid. First and foremost, Barkat wants to ensure that Jerusalem's culture institutions receive the funding they are due." Barkat has claimed that the current city government is subtly trying to strangle nightlife and cultural institutions that operate on Shabbat by withholding their funding. Barkat has vowed to support Jerusalem's cultural institutions financially and institutionally, hoping not only to increase the capital's cultural standing, but to stem the youth drain as well. After all, if theater and nightclubs can't keep 'em around, what will?

Meir Porush  

Age: 54

Political accomplishments to date: The ultra-Orthodox Porush has served in the Knesset since 1996 as part of United Torah Judaism (an amalgam of Porush's own Agudat Israel party and the Degel HaTorah party) though as a Knesset member, "Porush was not all that active politically. He wasn't an initiator," says Fogel. Aside from comparing Ariel Sharon to Benito Mussolini in a well-publicized 2005 controversy, though, "He had a job and he did it; he was very neutral. As they say, 'He didn't hurt, and he didn't help.'" Prior to his stint in the Knesset, Porush served as deputy mayor under Teddy Kollek, so he does have some experience in the Jerusalem municipal scene - although Fogel points out that the decision to run was not Porush's own. "Porush's party decided that he was their mayoral candidate, so he is their mayoral candidate," he says. 

Primary platform: According to Fogel, "Although Porush's campaign speaks about combating population flight and securing employment opportunities, his main platform is the fact that he's the Charedi candidate and everyone knows the Charedi sector will vote for him." However, "It's hard to tell exactly what Porush stands for," Fogel says, since the candidate has not made himself exceedingly available to the media: "He doesn't let his views be known. He's very handled [by former Knesset speaker Avrum Burg among others] and restricted in what he says. During Kollek's reign, Porush worked in the municipality's environmental department, but not even the charedi population knows what he did there." 

Cultural platform: Not surprisingly, Porush doesn't go out of his way to address Jerusalem's eclectic cultural landscape. According to Fogel, Porush has said that he doesn’t have a problem with people doing their own thing here in Jerusalem, but he has also never made any promises to strengthen Jerusalem's cultural institutions. "He is not billing himself as a fighter for Jerusalem culture. Now this may be because he will offend his constituency if he talks about it, or it may be his own view, but in any case, he has kept quiet on this issue." For now at least, it seems that Porush is of the live-and-let-live school of thought (as long as that living doesn't cross the borders of his neighborhood). While he supports keeping the roads closed on Shabbat in charedi neighborhoods, he has made no such demands on the rest of the city. "We have to remember, that Porush was only chosen at the Charedi candidate about two months ago [as opposed to Barkat who has been campaigning as opposition leader for many years], so we know far less about him," says Fogel.

Arkady Gaydamak (aka Arieh Bar Lev)

Age: 56

Political accomplishments to date: Like Barkat, Gaydamak's background is in business, not politics. Instead of serving in the city council opposition, however, the arms-dealing Gaydamak has been honing his political skills by buying up the Beitar soccer team as well as Bikur Cholim Hospital (which serves a largely charedi population), and financing respite programs for Katyusha-plagued northern residents and Qassam-afflicted Sderoters. According to Fogel, "Gaydamak is known as a man with a lot of money, who gives a lot to the community, but people are often wary of his support. People are suspicious of his motives. They think he is giving them money so they will vote for him at a later date."

Primary platform: Gaydamak too has pledged to fight Jerusalem's population drain and bring new jobs to the city. He claims that his connections in the business world make him the ideal man to bring new business and new investments to Jerusalem. Gaydamak also plans to invest more money in Jerusalem's higher education institutes and provide greater support to students and young people - so that they can choose to stay in the city as residents and not just as students.

Cultural platform: This Russian playboy has big plans for improving the city's nightlife. In fact, one of his major supporters recently sent letters to the current mayor protesting the fact that Jerusalem's Culture Department currently lacks a director. "This is a big part of Gaydamak's campaign," Fogel asserts. "He wants to know why the municipality is not doing anything about the cultural life in this city, why they are withholding funds and why they are letting culture die. He wants to revive it."

The (brief) low-down on City Council

As if choosing a mayor wasn't choice enough, there are scores of parties running for city council. For a party to make it onto the 31-seat council (only the mayor's six deputies receive a salary), they need to receive a minimum number of seats. Once they have passed that threshold, they need a smaller percentage of the vote to receive additional seats.

Fogel claims that because of this system, and general voter apathy (except in the charedi sector), it is almost impossible to tell which parties will garner seats. Apparently, only 38 percent of eligible voters bothered to show up at the polls for the last municipal elections, and Fogel fears a similar trend this time around as well - a trend which will most likely hurt Barkat and his party. "This year, the main fight is for mayor and not city council," Fogel says. "Every candidate also has a city council list, plus there are numerous other lists."

Fogel fears that smaller parties like Wake Up Jerusalem (Hitorerut Yerushalmim, which has already merged with the Yerushalmim party) will fail to hit the threshold required to make it into the city council, but will succeed in splitting the secular vote, causing the council to swing charedi, where there are fewer parties and the vote is more controlled. Apparently there is a movement underway to unify all the secular parties onto one list so that they achieve the critical mass needed to make it onto the city council. With one unified party, it will also be easier for the mayor to form a coalition and pass laws. But you know Jews - they can never agree on anything, leaving voters to choose between a myriad of options (Hitorrerut-Yerushalmim, Meretz, The Green Party (HaYarokim), Lma'an Yerushalayim, Likud, MAFDAL and Ichud Haleumi, Shas, Yisrael Beitenu to name a few…).

Happy voting!

Mayoral candidate Dan Birron was not discussed in this item, because in-depth coverage of his campaign will appear when Jerusalemite's mayoral election-themed content continues in the coming days.

Photo of Arcadi Gaydamak courtesy of Deror Avi.

Imagine, if you will, the mayoral candidates for Washington D.C. holding a Spanish-language debate and Q&A session in the city's largest Evangelical mega-church, with two of the major candidates mostly unable to speak Spanish, and one of those mostly unable to speak English to boot. Doesn't sound feasible, does it? Well, it isn't - but in Israel, nobody bats an eye at the direct equivalent. Last Saturday, the major candidates for the Jerusalem mayoralty (Nir Barkat, Meir Porush, Arcadi Gaydamak and Dan Birron) met for a supposedly English-language debate in front of a largely Anglo audience in the Great Synagogue. And, as intrepid Jerusalem blogger Molly at The Big Felafel reports...hijinks ensued.

The night’s follies began with an under-prepared Great Synagogue staff unable to accommodate over a thousand Anglos that showed up to the event. While everyone was trying to push their way in to the building, I noticed that the security went to lock all the doors…that seemed safe…

Then after they opened one door they refused to let the press in. That’s right, they refused the reporter from The Economist, BBC, and even the photographer from The Jerusalem Post (who hosted the event).

Of course the staff and security claimed they were over capacity and couldn’t let anyone else in. Did I mention that Nir Barkat and his entourage hadn’t arrived yet. Were they not going to let him in to his own debate? And, with people already sitting on the staircases and standing in open places, the synagogue was clearly already breaking the law, so their point was baseless.

Ok, so the mob scene was the first act in the comedy showcase but the best was yet to come.

Haredi Santa Claus Meir Porush spoke first, although not in English. It's not his fault, though - if the debate had been held in, say, Talmudic Aramaic, or the elaborate, duplicitous code language of modern Israeli politics, he would have dominated the room. Instead he mostly talked about housing for his constitue...er, everyone.

Afterwards, dark horse candidate Dan Birron, running on Aleh Yarok's well-developed platform of "OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD, THEY'LL TAKE AWAY THE BACON! SPEAKING OF BACON, IS ANYONE ELSE SUPER HUNGRY RIGHT NOW?" did Jerusalem's social liberals no favors by apparently showing up blazed. Time and place, dude. Time and place. Ganja is for Nachlaot, not politics.

And then came Arcadi. What Gaydamak's illicit billions have not been able to buy for him (politically, anyway) is the crucial ability to pander on the fly. The fugitive tycoon, whose English is nearly as bad as his Hebrew, has been courting the sympathies of religious Israelis by buying the threatened Bikur Cholim hospital and threatening to buy and render kosher the super-treyf Tiv Taam supermarket chain, and spent the debate squandering all that by talking at length to the mostly-religious, mostly-conservative crowd about his goal of complete social equality for Israeli Arabs. Right idea, wrong crowd, tovarisch.

And Barkat finally showed up, looking and sounding incongruously mayoral. In fluent English. Show-off.

Admittedly, much of day-to-day life in Jerusalem approaches the farcical - or at least we interpret it that way to keep from going crazy - but a serious debate between serious candidates for the position of mayor of a world capital, a city vitally important to billions of people, should not seem like Saturday Night Live, only funny. Right?

Jerusalemite's coverage of the Jerusalem mayoral elections will continue.

Photo of the Great (Synagogue) debate courtesy of Ariel Jerozolimski.

 

The green space around Jerusalem skews decidedly toward the western edge of the city, where pine covered hilltops create a shaded parkland much more suited to recreation than the arid desertscape that extends from the city’s eastern end. Hidden among the rolling hills between Ein Kerem and the Sorek valley sits the Beit Zayit reservoir, a body of water that seems invitingly out of place near the normally dry (save for a few springs) Jerusalem. But don’t let the pond’s beauty fool you, says the tourism authority’s Jerusalem Mosaic magazine.

The Municipality, with the help of the Mevasseret and Yehuda regional councils, has voted to go ahead with a plan to create a second lake next to the reservoir, this one just for recreation. Boats will be docked on the lake, and swimmers will presumably be able to swim without being sucked into it murky depths. Ancient agricultural artifacts found in the area will also be incorporated into the park, which will be one of four new parks planned to ring the city’s western edge. A 60 kilometer bike track is also planned to cover the four new parks.

The announcement to create the parks comes at a time when many of the country’s environmental organizations are expecting significant drops in donations - a byproduct of the slumping world economy. Even if the government is forced to welch, or postpone, on at least part of its plan, though, Jerusalemites can take comfort in the municipality's claim that the city boasts 85 square meters of green space per resident, making it already one of the greenest cities around.

As if the two-year waking nightmare of election season in America isn't enough, it's almost time to head to the polls in Jerusalem to choose our fair city's next mayor. There's an upside and a downside to this: the completely ineffectual Lupolianski is on the way out, and only time will tell what kind of improvement our fair city will see under his successor. But in the meantime, we can busy ourselves by having a closer look at the manner in which the various leading candidates are positioning themselves to the public. With prominent outdoor political advertisements occupying much of Jerusalem's visible surface area nowadays, we have little choice but to address the oddities therein.

Nir Barkat, if his ads are taken at face value, has missed the election memo and unilaterally declared himself mayor. It doesn't say "Nir Barkat for Mayor," it just says "Nir Barkat. Mayor." This is actually a dangerous tactic: Israeli voters have notoriously short memories (hello soon-to-be-PM Bibi!), and thus might assume that Barkat is already the mayor, and thus responsible for all the city's recent shortcomings. Bad mojo. Although at least the firmly secular Barkat has hit on a brilliant plan to court the religious vote....

Speaking of the religious vote, former deputy mayor Meir Porush, known mostly for single-minded championing of ultra-Orthodox interests during his tenure in the Knesset, is employing a novel tactic to connect with Jerusalem's three remaining secular voters: reinventing himself as a South Park-styled cartoon ultra-Orthodox Santa Claus. "You'll love him," goes the slogan - so much, presumably, that you won't miss meat on pizza, bacon, your gay friends, seeing women's hair, and mixed dancing. And as far as campaigns hiding.... (For more photos of and commentary on the Jerusalem mayoral campaigns' ads, click here.)

No stranger to being carved up, Jerusalem has had more claims lain on it than that Footprints poem, even dating back to its pre-Davidic dynasty days. Since 1948, it’s been pretty much accepted that at least the western half of the city would remain undivided and in Israeli hands, if not the whole of the town. But the Ruskies have found a way to jimmy themselves into a prime piece of Hanevi’im street real estate, creating a red zone in the city of gold. Sergei’s Courtyard, which was originally intended to be a waystation for Russian Pilgrims visiting the holy land, is set to be made sovereign Russian territory after Ariel Sharon (possibly in a land giving away frenzy) promised Vladimir Putin to return the compound to him in 2005. The Cabinet has since approved the deal and it will go through once a problem with unpaid taxes is cleared up.

The building sits on one of the best locations in all of Jerusalem, in spitting distance of the Old City, Ben Yehuda Street, Mea Shearim and (Gaydamak-owned) Bikur Cholim hospital. It has long been home to a number of tenants who live there under an archaic “key money” system, as well as the Agriculture Ministry and the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel.

The idea of Russia, which has often been at odds with Israel’s interests (Nuclear Iran, anyone?) reigning supreme over a piece of Jerusalem has caused many to worry, including this Jewish Press columnist who fears it will become a Church of the Nativity-like safe haven for terrorists.

Given Russia's close association with Iran and Syria, the prospect of its establishing an enclave in the heart of the Jewish capital is daunting indeed. It conjures up images of Arab terrorists fleeing into the compound and Israeli security personnel unable to pursue them without precipitating an international crisis. In many respects it would be tantamount to inviting a Russian spy ship to permanently dock right in the middle of an Israeli naval base. The Russian Compound's commanding position made it the perfect staging ground for numerous conquests of Jerusalem from the Assyrians to Titus's Roman legions.

The Russians, for their part, though, say there is nothing to worry about and that they will be good custodians of the property, which will be converted into a home for Orthodox priests (but not that kind), or a cultural center, depending on who you believe.

As the Associated Press tells it:

A Russian official denied accusations it seeks greater influence in the Middle East through the acquisition of Sergei's Courtyard, calling its desire to own the place a matter of historical significance.

"This has nothing to do with what is being called imperial ambitions because it's not a military base or something that can serve those purposes," said Alexei Skosyrev, a political counselor at the Russian Embassy in Tel Aviv.

Because Russians and Russian Orthodox priests have such a large presence in Israel, having actual Russia in Israel won’t be quite as incongruous as the Yakov Smirnoff Theater in fabulous Branson, Missouri. Still, losing one of the city’s most historic and beautiful buildings to a foreign power doesn’t bode well for a city already showing signs of strain at the seams. We can only hope that we won’t find Berlin laying claim to Emek Refaim or Armenia asking for its quarter back in the near future.