Some 35 cities and towns are heading to ballots between 1:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. on Sunday for a second round of voting for their new mayors after no candidate managed to pass the requisite 40% of votes on the first round on February 27.
Haifa is the biggest city to be holding a second round. Other cities include Ariel, Harish, Rehovot, Ramle, Kiryat Gat, and Binyamina-Givat Ada.
Another notable municipality holding a second round is Beit Shemesh, where incumbent mayor Dr. Aliza Bloch will face off against the Lithuanian haredi party Degel Hatorah's representative, Shmuel Greenberg. After the first round on February 27, Degel Hatorah signed agreements with the other two major haredi parties—the Sephardic party Shas and the hassidic party Agudat Yisrael—to shore up their support for Greenberg.
According to the agreement between Degel Hatorah and Shas, the latter's Beit Shemesh constituents will support Greenberg in this election, and Degel Hatorah's constituents, in exchange, will support a representative of Shas in the next election in five years.
Degel Hatorah and Agudat Yisrael also signed an agreement that the latter would support Greenberg in exchange for a signed agreement to run on a joint slate in the next national election – as the two parties have done since the 1990s.
Agreements alleviate tensions
The agreements thus appeared to end a high tension between the parties during the run-up to the first round of municipal elections, which broke out after Degel Hatorah violated an agreement from the previous municipal election in 2018 to support a Shas candidate in Elad. The Shas candidate in Elad. Yehuda Boutbul, still managed to pull off victory in the first round on February 27, after Shas succeeded in gaining the support of some of the hassidic factions that make up Agudat Yisrael.
In addition to a split between Degel Hatorah and Agudat Yisrael, the election in Elad threatened to split Agudat Yisrael in two. However, if respected, the agreements reached in Beit Shemesh will likely return the haredi political scene to its pre-municipal election status.