While Shas works to form a religious bloc with Yahadut Hatorah and Bayit HaYehudi as coalition talks move ahead, Aryeh Deri has not closed the door on running for mayor of Jerusalem. Shas officials are probing and conducting meetings to evaluate the atmosphere for a Deri race towards measuring what response his candidacy would receive from voters.
Working against Deri is the fact that Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu are on very good terms. On the other hand, Deri is encouraged by the fact that the chareidim received strong support in the recent 19th Knesset elections from Jerusalem residents. Yahadut Hatorah and Shas earned a combined 90,000 votes in that election.
Deri saw himself as a contender against Nir Barkat when he ran for his first term, but the moral turpitude clause of his fraud conviction hadn’t expired, compelling him to sit on the sidelines.
Another name recently mentioned for the capital mayoral position in the chareidi camp is former Mayor Uri Lupoliansky.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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3 Responses
IF the conscription crisis ends badly, i.e. in mass arrests of Bnei Torah (as opposed to merely eliminating subsidies paid by the government), the mayor of Yerusalayim becomes very important. Within the city, the secular zionists are a clear minority, and if they all voted, Hareidim and Arabs would have a majority. If the Lapid plans go through, cancelling the 1948 agreement under which Hareidim tolerated the medinah in return for being tolerated by the medinah, the focal point of changes would be in Yerusalayim – and if the mayor was a Hareidi who was on good terms with the Arabs, that mayor would be the face of Hareidi opposition to the hiloni elites. There has not been anyone so situated since Jacob Israel De Haan.
It will never happen, someone has to wake him up from his dream. There are many, Charedim included who are not interested in seeing Deri in politics again. He should venture out into education or business endeavors.
What’s that thing in this week’s parsha about taking bribes?