Monday-Friday mid-day reports from Israel by Robert Rosenberg
Images by Silvia Rosenberg (unless otherwise noted)
Local elections today
Tuesday, October 28, 2003
Tropical landscape, acrylics on paper, 100x70 by Silvia Rosenberg
Nearly 3.8 million Israelis had the right to go to the polls today to elect mayors and city councils, but the campaign was so sleepy, the issues so petty, that estimates at noon were that less than half the electorate would exercise their right to vote, in a country where national elections routinely draw upwards of 75 percent of the electorate. Nonetheless, the Likud was likely to lose some key towns – though it is unclear whether as backlash against government economic policies of the lackluster candidates the party sent into the race.
The big winner of the elections will by Shinui, the Cinderella party of the last general election, which for the first time was running candidates for local authorities, and expected to end up with as many as 150 city councilors around the country. One loser might be the Islamic Movement, which polls show is losing support among Israeli Arab voters. Pollsters and analysts say they are seeing breakups of the large parties in the Arab sector, and a return to clan and tribal politics on the local level. As opposed to that kind of purely nepotistic politics in the 1950s and 1960s, when mukhtars and family patriarchs made the decisions – usually whatever the ruling Mapai party wanted – a new generation of university educated Israeli Arabs are among the clan-oriented candidates. But the nationalist and Islamist messages of the past seem to be passé in the current elections.
The local elections come against the background of rising economic and security tension. A new Bank of Israel poverty survey released today shows that the number of Israeli poor – people living under the poverty line – tripled between 1988 and 2001, from 100,000 to 300,000 families. Haredim and Arabs were most hard hit. The main reason for the growing poverty cycle, said the report, was the system that emphasized handouts instead of job training. Meanwhile, the “mega-strike” as it’s being called, is still on for next week; Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Histadrut Chairman Amir Peretz totally distrust each other. The strike is against the government revoking collective wage agreements from earlier in the year to add more firings as part of massive restructuring of public sector employment, including pension programs. The strike is slated for November 3.
In Gaza, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz visited the Karni junction, where factories on the border between Israel and Gaza employ Palestinians, and where trucking stations pass goods from Israeli trucks to Palestinian trucks or vice versa, to enable trade between the two economies. Mofaz said he wanted to see if there were ways to improve the way in which goods move in and out of Gaza, “to ease conditions for the population.” While in Gaza, Mofaz was asked about yesterday’s surprise Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israeli military positions in the Mt. Dov area. Commentators said the Hezbollah attack was timed to coincide with a meeting of the Lebanese and Syrian military commanders in Beirut to discuss how to deal with any further Israeli attacks against Syria, such as the one that occurred after the Maxim massacre in Haifa just before the Jewish new year holidays. Mofaz said that the IDF has reports about Hezbollah planning a ‘major terror attack’ and that the IDF was taking appropriate steps to head it off. Yesteray, Benny Gantz, head of the Northern Command, warned that ‘Lebanon will pay the price’ for Hezbollah activity against Israel. Secretary of State Colin Powell publicly called on Israel and Syria to lower tensions on the northern border.
In Ramallah, meanwhile, it has become clear that Yasser Arafat will indeed reappoint Ahmed Qurei’ as prime minister. Arafat has apparently dropped his opposition to Nasser Yusuf as interior minister and reports about a compromise being worked out say that Jibril Rajoub will be a deputy minister of interior for the West Bank and a Mohammed Dahlan associate will get a similar position for Gaza. But between now and nest week’s putative reappointment, anything could happen.
Also in the West Bank, Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein has ordered a police investigation into a Kach-affiliated ‘Jewish Legion’ that advertises on the web that it is running courses to train troops for a new Jewish militia in the territories.
In other developments, the foreign ministry is gong on the offensive against the Geneva accords, formally complaining to the Swiss charge d’affaires about Bern’s involvement in promoting the draft treaty hammered out between unofficial Israeli and Palestinian personages, including former ministers, military officers, and political figures from the peace camp led by Yossi Beilin on the Israeli side and Yasser Abed Rabo on the Palestinian side. And in Colombia, there were reports that the guerrillas who captured some tourists – including four Israelis – were planning to free their captives, next week.
And according to the weather man, the first real rain of the winter is due tonight.
Ariga Recommends
 Death as a Way of Life David Grossman's collection of essays, starting in 1993, on the arc of the peace process from its optimistic begbeginnings the disaster known as the intifada. Highly recommended reading for anyone wanting to know what life is like in a land caught up in a spiraling madness in which people are taught terror and counter-terror, which have grown so interwoven that it has become impossible to tell where one begins and the other ends, is preferable to generosity of spirit, and compromise resulting from dialogue.
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