For some mayors, indictments and criminal probes no impediment to reelection
Ink still fresh on his plea bargain, Tamar regional council head keeps post; Netanya, Hadera, Nazareth leaders also cling to jobs
Marissa Newman is The Times of Israel political correspondent.
The head of a regional council who pleaded guilty to breach of trust, two candidates who were previously convicted of building violations, and the incumbent mayors of Netanya, Hadera, and Nazareth, who are under criminal investigation were all reelected on Tuesday in the nationwide local vote.
The results came in as several of the most closely watched races involving local leaders facing criminal prosecution — including Ashkelon Mayor Itamar Shimoni, who is on trial for bribery — had yet to be called by Wednesday afternoon.
Tamar Regional Council head Dov Litvinoff kept his position despite an October 11 indictment. Under a plea bargain, Litvinoff will confess to approving a NIS 400,000 ($100,000) transfer of state funds from the Settlement Division of the World Zionist Organization to a private firm, apparently a front company. The money was a 25% kickback to Alex Wiznitzer, then-chairman of the Mekorot Water Company, who had obtained a large government payout to the regional council from the Yisrael Beytenu party.
Litvinoff was raising the funds to build a research center in the Dead Sea area. He was also charged in a second incident of breach of trust.
Prosecutors are seeking nine months’ imprisonment for Litvinoff, and want to attach moral turpitude to the conviction. Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit had sought to suspend him, asking a special Interior Ministry panel to convene and remove Litvinoff from his position. But the committee rejected the request to have him suspended.
Under Israeli law, candidates may run for local government with indictments or convictions to their names and may only be disqualified from the race with a conviction of a crime that carries moral turpitude.
In Netanya, longtime mayor Miriam Feirberg-Ikar won a fifth term with some 50 percent of the vote. Endorsed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in this year’s race, Feirberg-Ikar has been under criminal investigation since 2016. Prosecutors have yet to announce whether they will press charges in her case, which centers on alleged fraud and breach of trust over benefits to real estate developers.
The race was also called for Nazareth Mayor Ali Salam, who in May announced he was under criminal investigation. Police had said in the spring that they detained a number of city officials for questioning over suspicions of theft, accepting an illegal gift in aggravated circumstances, fraud and breach of trust.
In Hadera, incumbent Tzvika Gendelman also retained his position with some 40% of the vote. In June 2018, Gendelman was among several suspects interrogated by the police anti-fraud unit, Lahav 433, after an early morning raid on their homes and offices. He was questioned over suspected bribery, corruption and tax-related offenses and was remanded for a week in custody.
And head of the Tur’an council in northern Israel, Imad Dahla, who is suspected of promising political appointments in exchange for support in the 2013 local elections, retained his seat with a whopping 75% majority.
Two other candidates were previously convicted of building violations.
In Haifa, Einat Kalisch Rotem became the first female mayor of the northern coastal city in a major upset that saw incumbent Yona Yahav removed from office after 15 years. An urban planner and architect by trade, Kalisch Rotem was convicted in March of building a three-story house in Zichron Yaakov without a building permit, according to The Marker business daily. She was fined NIS 30,000 for her involvement.
In Beer Yaakov, council head Nissim Gozlan was reelected despite a 2015 conviction over advancing a project without a building permit. A court fined Gozlan NIS 17,000 and barred him and other municipal officials involved in the case from attending municipality building planning meetings for two years. Gozlan was also backed by Netanyahu.
Other candidates under investigation fared poorly.
Nahariya Mayor Jacky Sabag was ousted from office after nearly three decades. In 2008, he was convicted of dumping raw sewage into the Mediterranean and ordered to pay a NIS 8,000 fine. The 74-year-old mayor found himself again under the police eye with a July 2018 interrogation on suspicion of breach of trust, in a probe Hebrew reports said dated back to 2013 and remains open.
In Zichron Yaakov, former regional council head Eli Abutbol was defeated by his opponent Ziv Deshe. In 2016, Abutbol resigned after police recommended he stand trial for extortion. The police recommendation, however, never yielded an indictment by prosecutors.
With votes still being counted, the authorities had yet to call the race for Ashkelon’s Shimoni, who is on trial over charges of bribery and breach of trust and had been suspended from office by the Interior Ministry.
In February 2017, Shimoni was charged with accepting bribes totaling NIS 466,000 ($124,000) and with breach of trust for accepting a further NIS 575,000 ($153,000) from unknown sources while mayor of the city. He was also charged with tax fraud. Sexual misconduct charges against him have been dropped.
The Interior Ministry panel suspended Shimoni from his position for a year in February 2017, later extending the ban until late November 2018. Shimoni had appointed his attorney as the no. 2 on his party list to be acting mayor should he win. By Wednesday morning, Shimoni was trailing his rival, acting Ashkelon mayor Tomer Glam, by just 200 votes, though the ballots of IDF soldiers and prisoners had not yet been tallied.
Shimoni, 50, was elected mayor in 2013 with 52% of the vote.
Also undetermined was the candidacy of Yossi Ben David in Yehud. In August 2017, the former Yehud mayor was charged with fraud, breach of trust and tax offenses over his advancement of real estate deals in 2009-2013 allegedly favoring his friend, a contractor, on whom he was “significantly financially dependent,” the charge sheet said.
It also remained unclear whether Khaled Tatur, the head of the Arab Israeli Reineh Council in the Galilee, would keep his job. He was charged in November 2017 with extortion, fraud and breach of trust over an incident that took place in early 2014, shortly after he took office.
In the central city of Rishon Lezion, Mayor Dov Zur was also awaiting a final voting count, though it appeared he was poised to face a runoff in mid-November after no single candidate clinched at least 40 percent of the vote. Zur was removed from office for 45 days when he was arrested in early December for alleged involvement in a bribery case involving Likud MK David Bitan — a former Rishon Lezion deputy mayor — and senior figures in the Rishon Lezion and Tel Aviv municipalities.
Zur is suspected of bribery, fraud and breach of trust for promoting certain construction projects in the city together with contractors, police said at the time.
Ahead of the election, the state attorney’s office in recent months has been wrapping up the investigations of numerous local officials, closing many of the cases without charges — and laying bare the staggering number of city officials who have come under police scrutiny in recent years.
In the past six months alone, cases have been closed without charge for a number of officials who had been up for reelection: Safed Mayor Ilan Shochat, Kiryat Shemona Mayor Nissim Malka, Ramat Gan Mayor Yisrael Zinger, Mevasseret Zion Mayor Yoram Shimon (running unopposed), Kiryat Motzkin Mayor Chaim Tzuri, Dimona Mayor Beny Biton, Har Adar local council head Chen Filipovich, Hevel Modiin Regional Council head Shimon Sosan, and Hatzor HaGlilit Council head Shimon Suissa, as well as Jerusalem council member and mayoral candidate Moshe Lion and Petah Tikva mayoral candidate Rami Greenberg.
The laundry list of candidates under police investigation has proven to be a Rorschach test for both anti-corruption crusaders and critics of the police critics, with the former citing it as proof of rampant, systemic corruption in Israel’s local councils, and the latter criticizing what they describe as an overeager force sinking its teeth into nearly every local council — only to mostly come up empty-handed.
