At a recent evening dedicated to his late mother, Sarah Kaminker, filmmaker Eitan Fox told the audience about her lifetime achievement: the community councils in Jerusalem, which later became known as a tool for residents to take an active part in shaping their neighborhoods. In Teddy Kollek's time, the idea was to decentralize the power of the municipality and distribute it among the localities. Kaminker, an American who brought with her new ideas and attitudes from the 1960s in the US, convinced then-mayor Kollek that decentralization was the best thing for the city, especially after the unification of Jerusalem in 1967. She, together with a group of municipal employees, created the models that later developed into the current 31 community councils.

A community garden in Pisgat Ze'ev. The community councils and centers run a variety of activities outside the municipality's sphere.

Kaminker attended the residents' meetings wherever they took place, be it the underprivileged neighborhoods of the Katamonim, Kiryat Hayovel or the Arab sectors annexed to the city after 1967. Meetings in Arab neighborhoods comprised men who would debate for hours on end the pros and cons of joining the project. "I think that after a while they stopped regarding me as a woman," she explained once when asked how she was accepted at such strictly male assemblies. "They got used to seeing me there, period. The result is that we now have now community councils in Arab areas of the city as well."

"From the way her son described her involvement in this project," says former city council member Anat Hoffman, "it is clear that it was her most cherished endeavor. It is such a pity that we are now witnessing the agony of her life's work."

The community councils are undergoing a major crisis, and some even say their future is in question. Mayor Nir Barkat recently announced his decision to close down the Jerusalem Association of Community Councils and Centers (JACCC) after he could not obtain the council chairmen's agreement to hold elections for new council boards as required by law.

Not so long ago, Barkat himself very much identified with the community councils, the association that represents them and its director-general, Tzvika Chernichovsky. But he now considers the association and Chernichovsky an opposition he can no longer trust.

The decision to close down the JACCC and to move community councils into one of the municipality's departments has been received as a declaration of war by the association, as well as by some of the staff of the community centers and councils.

The argument between the two sides that the elections should be held as soon as possible has already become ugly. Personal accusations are being slung, and the association is running ads in the local press opposing the mayor's decision.

The main opposition comes from the Forum of Chairmen of the local councils, an informal organization comprising city council chairmen that has become quite powerful. None of them has ever been elected, but they would like to delay the voting as long as possible, arguing that elections have to be prepared carefully and not hastily.

After three months of debates, meetings and negotiations - some of them in a highly tense atmosphere and dissonant tones - Barkat reached the conclusion that the association was in fact an obstacle not only to launching the elections procedure but also to providing the apparatus with which to give the residents the services they are entitled to. Thus he said to Chernichovsky a few weeks ago, "Either we go for elections in all the neighborhoods or I close down the association [of which Barkat is, by law, the chairman] and you go home."

As a result, Chernichovsky became the association's hero overnight, while the Israel Association of Community Centers, with which Chernichovsky's association is affiliated, publicly declared its intention to defend him. So now a war has been declared between the two sides.

"I AM not so surprised by this outcome," remarks city council member Meir Margalit of Meretz, himself a member of the municipal City Councils Department. "This is a typical situation where everybody is minding his own store rather than considering what is in the public's best interest."

"There is no argument that hardly any of these chairmen have been elected to their positions and are not exactly what I would call the best representatives of the people. They are not really leaders but people who like being in charge, albeit on a voluntary basis, and have thereby garnered a lot of power and influence," says Margalit.

"We are not against this mayor," says Ze'ev Landner, chairman of the Ramot Community Council and chairman of the Forum of Chairmen. "We want him to succeed; we have no other alternative. But he has to understand that he shouldn't interfere with us."

Adds Landner, "The mayor must understand that the community councils are a jewel of an achievement in regard to residents' involvement. They are based on the principle that any staff member or elected official's aim is to serve the public."

Landner, a veteran of the struggle against the haredi hegemony in Ramot, says he is sure that eventually logic and reason will prevail but adds that, for the moment, none of the neighborhood chairmen is ready to cave in, especially on the issue of firing Chernichovsky. "Mayor Barkat and all his staff have to realize who we are. We are volunteers. Not only do we not get paid for what we do, but we spend our own money to do it. Where else do you find people who feel so committed, who give so much of their own time, meeting at night and so on?... Regarding Chernichovsky's position, one should remember that he is an employee of the Israel Association of Community Centers, a public organization, and there is no way the mayor of Jerusalem can fire one of its employees. It's absurd. The salaries of 21 of the 30 directors of these community councils is paid by the national association, which invests in Jerusalem much more than it has to. What will Mayor Barkat do if they decide, as a result, to stop all these extra investments and funding? Who will cover it? That will create a loss of some NIS 9 million at least," says Landner.