Who’s Left?

The recent flare-up between police and protesters has brought Tel Aviv’s local politics to the fore.

By ARIEL ZILBER
Social justice protester 521 (photo credit: Illustrative photo: Dafna Talmon)
Social justice protester 521
(photo credit: Illustrative photo: Dafna Talmon)
For 15 years, he has been the dominant political force in Tel Aviv, where he has also proved to be a polarizing figure. He has been slammed as a dictator, while others credit his stewardship as instrumental in turning the city into the country’s most vibrant area. Yet in his appearance on Channel 2’s Friday evening news wrap-up show last week, Mayor Ron Huldai seemed more like a defendant taking the witness stand in a trial as part of a last-gasp defense strategy to brush aside the litany of accusations that have been hurled his way.
“It’s possible I may have reignited the social protest,” Huldai said sheepishly.
The public relations backlash began with the arrest of Daphni Leef, the young woman who ignited last summer’s protest by being the first to pitch a tent on Rothschild Boulevard.
Late last month, she and a few others suffered bruises after they were forcibly detained by crack police units that were called in to enforce Huldai’s vow that there would be no protest tents on the central Tel Aviv thoroughfare.
The protesters sought to defy Huldai’s edict, with thousands taking to the streets in hopes of once again rousing the nation out of its apathy and demanding changes that would lower the cost of living. After dozens of arrests and incidents of violence, it seems that the protests have lost the mass appeal of a year ago.
“We are talking about a small group of people that is trying to set fire to the streets,” Huldai told Channel 2.
“I’m against all violence, so both sides need to avoid it. Just as [former prime minister] Yitzhak Rabin said, violence eats away at the foundations of democracy.”
Those foundations have been rocked in recent weeks, at least according to social activists who are trying to reignite popular unrest. The municipality’s response to the tent protest has prompted Huldai’s erstwhile coalition partner, Meretz, to bolt.
“Huldai crossed a red line in sending inspectors to forcibly oppress the protesters on Rothschild Boulevard,” said Tamar Zandberg, a Meretz city councilwoman who, along with deputy mayor Meital Lehavi and councilman Ahmed Mashharawi, resigned her seat in Huldai’s 31-member coalition. “He showed himself to be an enemy of the protest, and as a result we lost faith in him. So we will continue our service in the opposition.”
Activists are accusing Huldai of secretly collaborating with the government in an effort to put down the protest, an accusation the mayor denies.
THE MOST controversial city hall decision was sending municipal inspectors who are normally responsible for maintaining clean streets to participate in confiscating tents that protesters sought to put up in a repeat of last summer’s campaign. This prompted critics to accuse the mayor of overstepping his authority by essentially deploying “a private militia” to stamp out protests for which he has no use.
“He has taken the sayeret yeruka [‘Green Commandos’], a division that is normally responsible for making sure that dogs are always on a leash and that dog owners clean up after their pets, and he has turned them into a quasi-police force,” says one social activist. “It’s a municipal militia.
In Israel, unlike in the US, there is no such thing. The municipality does not have the authority to enforce the law. That falls under the jurisdiction of the police. He is using municipal forces in contradiction of their authority [by] having them use violence [against the protesters].”
For Huldai, the last two weeks have been trying. Ever since Leef’s arrest galvanized the social-protest movement, the longtime mayor has been thrust into the spotlight against his will, with many accusing him of wielding excessive powers to crush the tent movement.
Last week’s announcement that the three Meretz city council representatives had left the coalition following alleged police brutality against protesters put the mayor on the defensive, if only briefly. It weakened his administration and, as a result, gave more power to the religious factions that hope to nudge Huldai toward a more conservative stance on issues like public transportation on Shabbat and the city’s support for gay pride initiatives.
“If I understand correctly, the battle for city hall has begun,” says Deputy Mayor Doron Sapir, a member of Huldai’s Tel Aviv One municipal coalition, which is a political union between Labor (Huldai’s party) and Kadima.
“If I could say it more precisely, the Meretz faction is being dragged after [Hadash MK] Dov Henin and his friends to wage the conflict over city hall on the back of the protest. We see the social protest as something positive, something important.... The Meretz resignation is a cynical exploitation of the protest. They are using the national protest as a weapon in their battle against Huldai.”
One council member who welcomed Meretz’s decision to quit was Benjamin Babayuf of Shas.
Throughout Huldai’s term as mayor, Babayuf has opposed his liberal social policies toward the homosexual community, as well as the city council’s support for public transportation on Shabbat. Now that Meretz has quit, Babayuf envisions his faction wielding more clout.
“We plan on having more stores closed on Shabbat, and we want to shut down the Gay Pride Parade,” he says. “We have no intention of voting with Huldai unless he gives us assurances on these issues.”
Regarding this consequence of Meretz’s departure, Sapir states that “Tel Aviv residents will have to pay a heavier price, that’s part of politics.
Everything will come at the expense of the residents.... Now the religious parties will be able to engage in more blackmail, since they wield greater influence.”
While many applauded the Meretz faction’s decision to heed the calls of its grassroots activists on the ground, others slammed the decision. The party’s critics from the Left and Huldai backers say it was simply a tactical move, since Meretz has traditionally resigned from the council shortly before municipal elections.
“I am regretful about [Meretz’s decision to resign], but I think that Lehavi was forced to do it,” says Sapir. “I think that there was no reason for Meretz to resign at this time because Lehavi claimed in her letter of resignation that she quit because of the violence of municipality inspectors against the protesters. In practice, it seems that there was no testimony or proof whatsoever that municipality inspectors behaved violently toward demonstrators.”
MERETZ’S MOVE still leaves Huldai with a majority coalition of 20 city council members from Tel Aviv One, the Pensioners, the Greens, the Likud, the Rov Ha’ir faction and the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Agudat Yisrael faction. Meretz will join an 11-member opposition that also includes Henin’s City For All, Shas, an animal rights party known as Tnu Lihyot (Let Live), and the Arab faction Yafa.
The disparate socioeconomic groupings in Tel Aviv dictate the city’s political battle lines, with relatively high-income earners in the central and northern areas more sympathetic toward the mayor.
While supporters credit him with turning the city into an international metropolis that attracts young, educated, middle-class residents, the poorer residents of Tel Aviv’s working- class southern districts have been irate over rising housing costs, which they say are a direct result of the municipality’s efforts to gentrify the city.
“Huldai behaves with tremendous hypocrisy,” says Aharon Maduel, a City For All council member who effectively functions as opposition chief since he heads the largest party in the opposition.
Unlike Leef and her companions, who burst onto the scene last year, Maduel is a veteran of social protests.
For the last eight years, he has been among the most outspoken critics of the municipality’s eviction policy in his home neighborhood of Kfar Shalem, where longtime residents found to have built homes there illegally were forcibly removed. The city councilman says he has seen a steady stream of real-estate and building contractors move into the neighborhood, with new apartment complexes driving up the cost of living.
“[Huldai] makes himself out to be some social democrat from the kibbutz, while in reality he is the direct embodiment of the link between wealth and politics,” Maduel says from his 10th-floor office overlooking Rabin Square. “Huldai aims to make Tel Aviv a city suited only for the rich, and this is not a cliché or a metaphor.
He has neglected south Tel Aviv, leaving it in an abominable state for the last 15 years that he has been mayor.
All you have to do is look at the area of the central bus station, the Hatikva and Shapira neighborhoods, Naveh Sha’anan, all the neighborhoods of the south.”
The City For All councilman is also not impressed with Meretz’s decision to join the opposition.
“This is a very late decision,” he says. “We’re already past most of the city council’s term. This is typical of Meretz. In the two previous city council terms, they were participants in the coalition almost throughout the entire term, only to pick a perfect time to resign just before the elections. But as they say, better late than never.”
He says Meretz was “a very tiny cog in the coalition,” and adds that Huldai’s conduct “does not allow people around him, particularly his coalition partners, to advance significant initiatives.”
THE RECENT flare-up between police and protesters has brought local politics to the fore. Even though Huldai’s coalition has weakened, observers say nobody should expect early elections, since the country’s municipal power structure, which is derived from prestate British Mandatory laws, grants the mayor extensive authority. City council members do not receive a salary and therefore have to work at full-time jobs to support themselves.
The only salaried elected officials in the municipality are the mayor and the deputy mayors, whose areas of responsibility are at the sole discretion of the mayor. The law grants mayors and council heads sweeping authority to run local affairs, enabling them to amass considerable influence among grassroots activists who are then called upon during national elections to bring masses of voters to the polling booths.
Given Huldai’s position as mayor, it would be an exaggeration to expect that anyone will put up a serious challenge. In fact, his status is virtually bulletproof, since municipal opposition in the country is virtually powerless to bring down ruling mayors.
“Tel Aviv has a somewhat different status than other cities from both a formal and informal standpoint,” says a Meretz official who is active in local politics. “The Tel Aviv Municipality has a tremendous capability to impact and promote various initiatives on the national level, as well as Knesset legislation. It has clout with government ministries, the business community, and Jewish communities in the Diaspora. So the mayor of Tel Aviv is in many aspects a small prime minister, [and] his conduct toward the coalition is very aggressive and belligerent. Everyone in his coalition knows that they are there not to give voice to their platform or to advance issues that are important to them, but to serve at the pleasure of Huldai. This is problematic and undemocratic.”
The official states that “the people who are running the city in practice are Huldai and a number of aides and technocrats who are not accountable to anyone.”
However, the Tel Aviv Municipality rejects these assertions.
“These are claims that are undoubtedly motivated by interests that have to do with the upcoming municipal elections,” a spokeswoman says. “Any serious checking of facts will reveal that the Tel Aviv-Jaffa Municipality and the person who leads it allow all forms of protest and expression in the city. In addition, since the municipality has not received even one complaint of violence committed by municipal inspectors, it seems that there is not much behind the claims leveled against the Green Commandos, whose job is to preserve public order.”
The municipality also rejects Maduel’s claims that city hall is abusing residents of Kfar Shalem.
“As someone who himself is being sued for encroaching on public property, and as someone who has refused to make the most basic payments for doing so, we would suggest Mr.
Maduel looks in the mirror,” the spokeswoman says. “The issue of Kfar Shalem did not begin during Huldai’s tenure. Anyone who knows the city budget and the special preferences given to the neighborhoods of the south and Jaffa will attest that Maduel’s accusations are baseless.”
The municipality adds that in recent years it has been working to develop the southern neighborhoods “through unprecedented levels of investment numbering in the tens of millions of shekels, that have been earmarked for welfare and education.
The city has poured in tremendous investment – four times that of the amount of investment in the north – in rebuilding infrastructure, maintaining public cleanliness, enforcing public order in open spaces, and more.”