Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's pick in a competitive Jerusalem mayoral race conceded defeat on Wednesday as the race heads to a second round of voting between a staunchly secular candidate and a veteran political activist allied with city's ultra-Orthodox.
Results of the municipal elections released Wednesday show veteran political activist Moshe Lion and secular activist Ofer Berkovitch moving on to another vote on Nov. 13 after neither won 40 percent.
47-year-old Lion, a skullcap-wearing bureaucrat favored by two key members of Netanyahu's rightist cabinet, will face off against Berkovitch, the 35-year-old deputy mayor, after they came out on top of Tuesday's five-man contest with 33 and 28 percent of the votes, respectively.
Netanyahu's candidate Zeev Elkin, the current minister of Jerusalem affairs, was eliminated after coming third with 19 percent of the votes.
The winner will succeed outgoing long-time Mayor Nir Barkat, who is leaving his post to run for parliament with Netanyahu's Likud Party.
Jerusalem is a diverse city, with a Jewish population divided between secular residents, modern Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox. In addition, about 40 of the population is Palestinian, including Muslims and Christians.
The overall turnout of the Jews and Palestinians living both western and eastern sectors of the city remained at 32 percent, the lowest turnout rate in Israel.
The majority of the city's Palestinian residents typically boycott the elections as it would mean accepting the Israeli occupation in the city's eastern half since 1967. Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem and declaration of the city as its capital has not won international recognition despite the Trump administration's move in late 2017.
Many Jerusalem Palestinians complain of entrenched neglect by the Israeli municipality. A Palestinian candidate who bucked the boycott by running for the administrative Jerusalem City Council failed to garner enough votes to get in as only two to five percent of East Jerusalem's Palestinians turned out to vote, according to Israeli media outlets.
Although the Palestinian community of East Jerusalem is entitled to vote in municipality elections, they are barred from running for mayor and they are not entitled to vote in general elections.
Both Lion and Berkovitch - whose second-round ballot is on Nov 13 - have vowed to appeal to all sectors of the city. Neither is likely to break with Netanyahu government policy against ceding East Jerusalem for the Palestinians' hoped-for future state.
Trailing fourth in Tuesday's mayoral election was Yossi Daitsh, the sole representative of ultra-Orthodox Jews who, by making up 36 percent of Jerusalem's Jewish Israeli populace, might have been the biggest voting bloc.
Instead, many ultra-Orthodox voted for candidates outside their close-knit community - a possible gauge of their assimilation in wider Israeli society where their welfare benefits and military draft exemptions are often resented.
On the Jerusalem City Council, however, ultra-Orthodox lists took 14 of the 31 seats - the same presence as previously.
Twenty-one percent of Jerusalem Jews are secular, while 43 percent are not ultra-Orthodox but of various less strict religious denominations.
Elsewhere in Israel, longtime Tel Aviv incumbent Ron Huldai was re-elected for the fifth time and Einat Kalisch Rotem ousted longtime Haifa Mayor Yona Yahav to become the first female mayor of Israel's third-largest city.
The local elections, held every five years, are an important barometer for the strength of Israel's major political parties. However, many candidates run as independents or on non-traditional party lists, making it difficult to gauge any broader political impact from the results.
In the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, the Druze, an Arabic-speaking minority, voted for the first time since Israel captured the area from Syria 51 years ago.
Dawlan Abu Saleh, appears to have won the mayoral race in Majdal Shams, garnering over 250 votes. However, the vast majority of Druze did not vote amid a fierce boycott campaign. Community leaders, many who remain loyal to Syria, said voting would constitute recognizing Israeli control over occupied territory.
