Moshe Lion sworn in as Jerusalem city council member

Accountant from Givatayim, who lost mayoral race to incumbent Barkat, defies skeptics who expected him to be a no-show

By Raphael Ahren 21 November 2013, 11:49 pm

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Raphael Ahren is a former diplomatic correspondent at The Times of Israel.

New member Moshe Lion attends the first meeting of the Jerusalem city council on November 21, 2013. (photo credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Moshe Lion was sworn as a member of the newly elected Jerusalem city council Thursday evening, defying skeptics who expected he would be a no-show.

Lion, an accountant from Givatayim who ran unsuccessfully for Jerusalem mayor last month, could still resign at any given moment. But he said he intended to remain, Radio Kol Chai reported.

“I’m staying in the municipality, that’s why I came tonight,” Lion told the station before the city council session commenced.

In the October 22 municipal elections, Lion headed the Likud-Yisrael Beytenu list in Jerusalem, which garnered just one of 31 seats in the capital’s city council. Before the new council’s inaugural session Thursday, various sources had predicted he would not take up his list’s seat.

“I can hardly imagine that Lion is going to want to join [Mayor Nir] Barkat’s coalition; that would be a bit awkward. I also don’t think that he would be ready to sit in the opposition. He has no allies there,” one source had predicted.

Lion, who was urged to run for mayor by his close friend and Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman (who ran his election campaign), moved to Jerusalem from Givatayim a few months ago.

On October 24, two days after he lost his election bid, garnering a creditable 45% of the vote (compared to 51% who cast their ballot for Barkat), Lion said he was unsure whether he would join the city council. “I have held much more senior positions; I will need to consider where I will go,” the former director of the Prime Minister’s Office told Israel Radio at the time. “As you know, I have other private pursuits here, and it’s entirely possible that I will continue in my private business.”

Before the election, Lion had repeatedly stated that the well-being of Jerusalem was dear to his heart. “It’s time Jerusalem had [a mayor] who can bring about a real revolution,” Lion told Channel 2 news two days before the polls opened, explaining that he had 15 years of “action for the sake of Jerusalem, albeit quiet and understated,” behind him to back up his candidacy. “It’s a real mission for me.”

Barkat, after failing to win a 2003 bid for mayor, sat on the city council for five years before mounting a successful mayoral challenge in 2008.