Former Shas head considering run for Jerusalem mayor

Former Shas head Eli Yishai, who was unceremoniously set aside last week by the party’s spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef in favor of Aryeh Deri, is said to be considering a run for the mayor of Jerusalem instead of playing second fiddle to Deri in the Knesset.

Yishai doesn’t see a future for himself as a Shas MK under rival Deri, according to close associates of the former interior minister interviewed in Maariv on Monday. “Yishai realized that he had nothing more to look forward to in the movement under Deri, so he decided to go for a new career,” they said. “He has excellent relations with the Lithuanian and Hasidic [ultra-Orthodox factions], and he is sure he will recruit them to his bid too.”

If Yishai feels he can gain the backing of the various Orthodox factions of the capital, including the religious Zionists, he will announce a run for mayor and quit the Knesset, they said.

Jerusalem municipal elections are scheduled for this fall. The current mayor, Nir Barkat, is a business-oriented secularist who is not especially popular among the capital’s ultra-Orthodox residents. If Yishai, who would likely carry the Sephardic ultra-Orthodox vote and also attract non-religious, traditional Jews of Middle-Eastern background, can also rally the various Ashkenazi religious factions behind him, he would pose a formidable threat to Barkat’s re-election.

Deri returned to politics in the last election cycle after a seven-year ban on running for public office, stemming from his 1999 conviction on bribery charges, for which he served nearly two years in jail. Upon his return he entered into a tripartite power-sharing agreement with Yishai and MK Ariel Atias, but last week Yosef formally installed Deri as Shas head, the position he held in the 1990s at the height of the religious party’s power.