The power of Shas in decline

For years, the Jerusalem city council was considered one of the strongholds of the party, but the glory of the past has faded away.

By PEGGY CIDOR
Arye Deri (Shas) (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
Arye Deri (Shas)
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
The Jerusalem City Council was the cradle that first saw the development of a new political and social movement: Shas.
It was back in the 1980s, when Eli Yishai was elected to the council under mayor Teddy Kollek, and he and his close assistant, Arye Deri, took their first steps into local politics, and from there to national politics… and the rest is history.
For years, the Jerusalem city council was considered one of the strongholds of the party, but the glory of the past has faded away, and the present – not to mention the future – standing of the party is one big question mark.
Ever since two major figures of the party who for years sat on the council – Shlomi Attias and Eli Simhayoff – stepped away from Safra Square, things have not been the same for Shas. Attias left for better conditions as CEO of one of the city’s subsidiary companies, admitting that he had had more than enough of politics and its ugly intrigues; and Simhayoff, who crafted a flamboyant career providing juicy headlines to the local press during his years as deputy mayor, is serving a jail sentence for his part in the Holyland affair.
Representatives of Shas on the city council since the 2013 elections have from the beginning been “something else,” according to Attias, with evident failures and minimal accomplishments. But the most visible change has been the high turnover on the list, certainly compared with the old Shas members on the council. Moreover, while in the past their numbers – at least five members on the council – together with the eight members of the Ashkenazi haredi list (United Torah Judaism) formed a block of haredim needed for any coalition, today the situation is completely different.
The first change is the result of the internal wars inside the party, following the split between Yishai and Deri and their followers.
Sources inside the party even say it as an “open war without taking prisoners” between the two sides. The same holds true for the representatives on the city council; some of them are still faithful to Yishai, which automatically turns them into a “potential high risk” in the eyes of Deri and his men.
As a result, no fewer than three members of the list have left or been replaced by others, and the bottom line remains that Shas has stopped being a significant and influencing power on the council.
The results are painful for the constituency of a party which not so long ago was a powerful influence on local and national politics.
“All the struggles over Shabbat in the city are led by our brothers from the Ashkenazi haredim party,” one of the Shas councilman’s assistants admitted gloomily. “We have become totally irrelevant.”
The former leader of the party on the city council since 2013 elections, Michael Malkieli, has been promoted to the Knesset. Asher Mishaeli, who replaced him, is highly suspected of still being faithful to Yishai, and therefore Deri is pushing him out of the council, but is still looking for someone for the task of party leader, even before Malkieli has been replaced himself.
Zvika Cohen, the last and new hope for the party, has undergone surgery, and is not scheduled to come back to duty for a long period.
Avraham Bezalel, considered by many to be loyal to Deri, is probably going to finally replace Mishaeli, but Mishaeli, for the moment, refuses to leave Safra Square. Nahmaniel Sabban resigned last month from the city council, officially because he needs to earn a living – city council members are not paid, unless they are deputy mayors.
Meanwhile, the jewel of the crown of being part of the coalition – directing the haredi education administration – remains in the hands of the Ashkenazi haredi list, to the regret of Shas’s leader, Arye Deri.