New faces around the table of Jerusalem's city council
This is how Jerusalem voted.
By PEGGY CIDOR “Hitorerut in Jerusalem” leader Ofer Berkovitch October 30 2018 (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
The new elected council will meet for the first time on December 4 under one of the two final candidates as the new mayor. Among the 30 city council members, 10 are newcomers, while the other 20 members have already served in their respective lists. In the outgoing council, the largest list was the haredi United Torah Judaism list. In the new council, the largest party, with seven seats, will be Ofer Berkovitch’s pluralist Hitorerut.Moshe Lion, the other mayoral finalist, failed to get even one seat at the council. Thus, if he is elected, he will need a special permit from the Interior Ministry to allow him to be mayor without a council list. Meretz has already announced that it will appeal to the High Court of Justice against such a permit.Altogether, this new council will have 14 seats representing the haredi sector, to which are added four seats for the religious and hardal (national haredi) sectors – leaving 12 seats (plus one for the next mayor) for the pluralist sector.The composition of the incoming council is as follows:Hitorerut, 7 seats• Ofer Berkovitch (at press time, one of the two final mayoral candidates), 35• Einav Bar-Cohen, 31• Elad Malka, 31• Aliza Arens, 62• Dan Illouz, 32
