Jerusalem's political drama: A mayor's longtime rivalry with an activist

Election time is usually a period full of passions – mutual accusations, aggressive campaigns and verbal street battles between the competitors for the voter’s heart. Less than six months to the mayoral and council elections, and the city of Jerusalem is dozing off, at least as far as these elections are concerned.

As of this writing, there is only one candidate for mayor – current Mayor Moshe Lion. Factions for the city council are still far from being cohesive, and the trade-off between many organizations takes place mostly behind the scenes, and even there the atmosphere is still sleepy.

Against this background, the ongoing skirmish between Lion and veteran social activist Yossi Saidov, from the Gonen neighborhood and its local council administration, stands out. The two have been enemies for close to a decade, and it seems that with or without the upcoming elections, the current chapter in this never-ending saga is making the noise that the next October elections has not yet created in the city.

Yossi Saidov vs. Moshe Lion: The never-ending saga of political drama

The background for the current round is quite simple: Saidov was elected a year ago as a member of the management of the neighborhood administration of Gonen, and Efrat Zucher was elected to be the chairwoman. About 10 days ago, there was a brief and quite blatant coup d’état, when a new member was introduced to the board, followed by a decision to hold a vote of confidence for the administration’s management, which ended in the sudden removal of Zucher and the election of Saidov as new chairman.

For a long period, ego battles, honest differences about the most desirable way to meet the needs of the residents, and a long list of demands and claims fueled the tensions within the neighborhood administration, which culminated with the removal of Zucher. But there is something else. Saidov (who was chairman of the same administration several years ago, and then was the one ousted by an ad hoc local coalition) is a determined activist who has many struggles on his résumé, most of which were successful.

One of them is Hamesila Park, which was born out of residents’ opposition to a six-lane road that was planned there, opposition which Saidov was one of the most prominent in leading. Saidov was also very active in the fight to move the Blue Line of the light rail to Emek Refaim Street, against the opposition of many residents of the German Colony.

But above all these issues, what hovers is the hostility between Saidov and Lion. Lion attributes to Saidov political ambitions. Yet Saidov has been claiming for years that he has no political plans and that he is all about doing a service for the residents.

Earlier this week, Zucher, who decided not to give up, presented a legal opinion according to which her impeachment was illegal and therefore Saidov’s election to the position of chairman in her place is also void. That was the spark for the friction between Lion and Saidov to flare up again, with Saidov claiming that the mayor is trying to get rid of him.

On Friday, May 5, Saidov wrote on his Facebook page that he intends to file lawsuits against Lion, and that from the moment he was elected chairman of Gonen, Lion worked to remove him. Saidov added: “After the administration elected me chairman, I told my wife: ‘I have been chairman of the community administration for two minutes. The attempts to remove me began three minutes ago.’”

Saidov claimed that members of the Gonen administration board were threatened that budgets for the neighborhood would be stopped, and that the mayor’s adviser called the board members and slandered him in their ears, presenting him as a quarrelsome man who dismantled the community administration and practices violence. ❖