From the Liveblog of
Thursday, February 20, 2025
Results published for delayed elections in northern locales; Kiryat Shmona race goes to 2nd round
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
The Interior Ministry releases the results for Tuesday’s local elections in a number of northern locales that were unable to go to the polls with the rest of the country last year due to the war with Hezbollah in the north that displaced tens of thousands of residents.
Elections in the city of Kiryat Shmona and the Upper Galilee Regional Council will go to the second round on March 4.
In the Merom HaGalil Regional Council, Amit Sofer is elected with 69.19% of the vote. In the Mevo’ot HaHermon Regional Council, Binyamin Ben Muvhar wins with 55.53% of the vote.
In the Ma’ale Yosef Regional Council, Shimon Gueta is elected with 42.45% of the vote. In the Shlomi local council, Gabi Naaman wins by default because nobody else ran.
According to the Interior Ministry, 58.08% of eligible voters — 36,312 people — voted in Tuesday’s elections.
Israel’s first nationwide local elections since 2018 had initially been scheduled for October 31, 2023, but were pushed off to January 31, 2024, in the wake of Hamas’s devastating October 7 attack on southern Israel. They were delayed a second time, due to the number of reservists still fighting, and were finally held across most of the country in February 2024.
Additional elections for select regions of southern Israel that had been unable to go to the polls at the same time as the rest of the country were held in November 2024.
The Times of Israel Community.