The 4 J'lem mayoral candidates present their platforms at a jammed Jerusalem Post event.
By YAAKOV KATZ
Meir Porush stressed his 25 years of experience in municipal and national government; Nir Barkat emphasized his years of experience in the private sector which, he claimed, offered the only solution to the city's ills. Retired Israel Television producer Dan Birron portrayed himself as the only true representative of the secular community; and Arkadi Gaydamak maintained that Jerusalem under his management could lead to world peace.
These, in a nutshell, were the messages that the four candidates running for the office of mayor of Jerusalem conveyed to an audience of 1,500 mostly English-speaking, curious and opinionated residents who packed the Great Synagogue on Saturday night to hear them.
Interest in the unique AACI-Jerusalem Post-sponsored event - the only time all four candidates have appeared together during the election campaign - was so high that hundreds of people who arrived at the last minute were left stranded outside as the Great Synagogue was forced to close the doors to comply with fire regulations.
Inside, the audience appeared largely, though certainly not exclusively, to belong to the city's religious-Zionist sector, the sector that could prove pivotal in the election, since of the two front-runners, Porush's natural base is haredi and Barkat's is secular. In their speeches, Porush and Barkat tried to expand their constituencies by appealing to the heritage each of them professes to share with the modern Orthodox community.
Gaydamak expressed strong support for the haredi population but pitched most of his appeal to the Arabs of east Jerusalem, who have, until now, refused to participate in any municipal election since 1967. Dan Birron, the only genuine non-politician in the group, made no direct appeals but was intent on explaining his liberal-secular credo.
Porush began his speech by describing a visit to a post-Simhat Torah celebration at a religious Zionist event where he had been warmly welcomed and was told that for all the differences between religious Zionists and haredim, they shared the love of Torah and should live in harmony. "I said to them that now that we are starting a new year, we should make every effort that this will not be a year of infighting among Jews," Porush continued. "This should be a year in which we find the golden path to live together for love of Israel, the Torah and the land of Israel."
Porush's trump card in the campaign is the experience he brings with him from his 25 years of public service in the Jerusalem municipal council and the Knesset, including a three-year stint as acting housing minister. "I served in various positions in the municipality for 13 years," he told the audience. "As our sages say, 'There is no one smarter than one with experience."
During his years in the Housing Ministry, he continued, "I learned through action and practice the processes of planning and building neighborhoods and marketing land. The ministry is an excellent school for anyone who wants to be mayor. [Meanwhile], 12 years in the Knesset taught and prepared me for the complicated task of mayor of Jerusalem. If I have to sum up, [my message is] experience, experience, experience and more experience."
He presented a platform that included seeing to it that the government keeps its promises to maintain Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and seat of central government, strengthening the spiritual status of the city as the capital of the Jewish people, developing industrial infrastructure and attracting hi-tech industry, increasing tourism, and building parks, bicycle routes and cultural centers.
Porush also said he wanted to restore the 1967 demographic balance between Jews and Arabs in to the city to 72 percent versus 28%. Today, he said, the ratio was 66% versus 34%. "Unless this trend is stopped," he warned, "Jerusalem will be lost." To accomplish this, he said he would build housing and provide jobs for 100,000 Jewish newcomers to the city. He added that he had studied models from other countries for providing relatively inexpensive accommodation for young couples. He also promised that the housing would be allocated fairly to all the sectors of society.
DAN BIRRON, who spoke next, set the stage for the presentation of his platform by protesting the fact that he was speaking at the Great Synagogue. "I believe there should be a separation between religion and politics," he declared. "I'm secular, not religious. You can be sure I know the Torah and the Tanach and I studied a lot. But no one will tell me or my friends how to worship God. I do it in my own way."
Birron said the haredim constituted only 19.1% of the population of Jerusalem and that therefore the city should not have a haredi mayor. "Everyone deserves his share [of representation]," said Birron, "but why should Porush rule over the secular majority?"
He explained that he decided to run only after hearing a report on Israel Radio that Barkat had invited Aryeh Deri to join his team after the court barred the former Shas leader from running in the election himself. [Barkat later said the report was untrue and that he had not met with Deri for the past year and a half.] "At that moment, I said I would pick up the gauntlet," Birron stated.
Then, he presented his platform, a hodge-podge of ideas, not all of which are within the purview of the local authority. "We stand for Jerusalem," he said. "First of all, clean. Because nowadays, Jerusalem is dirty. Then we are for freedom and we say, 'Live and let live.' Don't tell us what to do, don't tell us what to eat, don't tell us where to go and spend our time. We say there should be as little interference as possible from the authorities in the way we live. We are for civil marriage. We are for preserving the natural resources - air, water and soil. We want transportation seven days a week, 24 hours a day, including Shabbat… We are for lower taxes on working people and much more tax on capital," Birron asserted.
NEXT ON the roster, Gaydamak presented a far-reaching, almost ethereal vision of how he perceived the future of Jerusalem. He did not present a pragmatic platform and acknowledged that he did not know anything about the daily operations of the city and would let qualified professionals look after that. He said he would be responsible for seeing that the results were satisfactory.
Gaydamak also did not explain why he was running in the first place. "I am coming to politics to serve as mayor not because I know how to run City Hall but because all my life I have asked myself why I am a Jew. And being Jewish means being part of our Jewish community, our Jewish solidarity, always to be with my community. We should do everything to make Israel strong, and I want to build Jerusalem."
He stressed that the way to make Jerusalem and Israel strong was to create equal living standards and conditions for the Arab population of the city. He sees this as the crucial element in a grand vision. "The world is not the same as it was 60 or even 30 years ago," he told the audience. "Today, the majority of Arabs want peace. We should also create a situation to reach peace and live together. Jerusalem is precisely the place where we are living with an Arab population without borders."
Until now, he said, Israel has maintained peace and protected its Jewish citizens by using the police. "To decrease tensions, we can start the real peace by giving respect to the residents of east Jerusalem," he continued. "By working together, by not neglecting their interests, we can create real mutual respect with the Arab community in Jerusalem, then with the Arabs in our region, and then peace in the entire world."
Once peace came, he added, Jerusalem would become one of the most important capitals in the world and could attract international agencies and organizations such as UNICEF or UNESCO to establish their headquarters in Jerusalem, "creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the city."
Gaydamak also expressed unstinting support for the haredi community. "We should provide them with our entire, unconditional support," he said. "Unfortunately, today not everyone is a haredi. We should provide those who are with our entire, entire support. It is difficult to live with haredim. Okay, what can you do? Without them, we would never know why we are Jews."
BARKAT, WHO arrived late from another appointment and spoke last, portrayed himself as the man of the future and strongly intimated that Porush was the man of the past. He said he represented private enterprise and private wealth that could be harnessed to create a great city. The experience gained by years working in the government, the old-style askanut (cronyism) had nothing to offer to make Jerusalem great, he said. "Jerusalem needs entrepreneurial thinking that comes from outside the system," he said. "I will push for hi-tech. I come from that field. I know how to work with them. I know how to help develop their businesses. I know how to work with entrepreneurs. I know how to attract hi-tech, how to create jobs. It won't come from government experience. Political askanut is not the right experience."
Barkat also said he has donated millions of shekels to nonprofit enterprises in Jerusalem and that he knew the world of philanthropy. He said philanthropists from the Diaspora had invested hundreds of millions of dollars in nonprofit institutions in Jerusalem but were unhappy with the results. He said he would guide and advise them to make better contributions.
He also charged that the outgoing city administration had no goals and that there was no transparency in government. Municipal committees did not meet, and those that did were not open to the public. "I have the courage, vision and experience to fight for Jerusalem, to compromise when necessary and to define goals," he declared.
He also described a broader vision of the city as an important world capital - "on the level of Paris, London or New York" - which would attract 10 million tourists a year instead of the current one or two million. This could be done, he said, by emphasizing the Jewish roots of the city. He cited as an example one of the most controversial projects in the city. "From my perspective," he said, "the City of David is proof of what we can do in the rest of Jerusalem to make us proud of our Jewish roots. Anyone who goes down to the City of David understands it is ours. It's nobody else's. The extreme Muslim fundamentalists are trying to ignore history. They try to erase the Holy Temple, the Holocaust and any kind of Jewish roots."
Barkat called for keeping the city united by developing a metropolitan concept and using public transportation to link Ma'aleh Adumim, Gush Etzion, Efrat, Mevaseret Zion and Givat Ze'ev to the city.
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