Candidate for Tiberias mayor says she was offered ‘jobs’ in exchange for quitting race

A candidate in Tiberias’s October 2023 mayoral election tells a Knesset committee that she has been offered “jobs” in exchange for quitting the race.

Shani Illouz tells the Knesset’s Internal Affairs Committee, which is preparing a bill that would affect eligibility for Tiberias’s municipal race, that she has been pressured to back down.

The controversial Likud-backed bill would enable an acting mayor to run in municipal elections without the one-term cooling-off period currently required by law.

The cooling-off period was implemented with the intention of reducing the advantage that an acting mayor would have as an incumbent, under the theory that it is undeserved because acting mayors are appointed, not elected.

“No one made offers to you,” Tiberias’s acting mayor and chief beneficiary of the bill, Boaz Yosef, slaps back.