The air of triumph that pervaded Umm el-Fahm on Election Day two weeks ago was absent in this village Tuesday, as Israeli Arabs returned to the polls to vote in runoff elections for mayor.
In Umm el-Fahm, Moslem fundamentalists swept the elections two weeks ago, winning 11 out of the 15 seats on the town council and electing a 30-year-old sheikh as mayor. It was a severe blow to the Communist Democratic Front for Peace and Equality, which had dominated the town for 14 years.
Here the fundamentalists also did well two weeks ago. But the scene was very different during the second round on Tuesday. The school hall that served as the headquarters of the Moslem fundamentalist movement was half empty.
Solemn men gathered around their spiritual leader, Sheikh Kamal Hatib, and their candidate for mayor, Sheikh Atef Hatib, 39, a mathematics teacher at a local high school. They calculated the returns arriving from the ballot boxes and admitted that they had been defeated.
Kafr Kanna is a village of some 11,000 residents on the winding road from Nazareth to Tiberias. This village of almond and pomegranate trees is where Jesus supposedly performed the miracle of turning water into wine. It is also the site of a Jewish synagogue dating back to Talmudic times.
38.6 PERCENT IN FIRST ROUND
The Islamic movement has been active here for the past five years. Its popularity has grown mainly because of the services it has provided at low cost: a library and medical and educational facilities. Last year, the movement organized a huge event featuring singer Yusef Islam, known as Cat Stevens before he converted to Islam.
That popularity translated into votes two weeks ago, when the Moslem fundamentalists won 38.6 percent of the popular vote, just short of the 40 percent plurality needed to win the mayoralty without runoff elections.
In Tuesday’s second municipal round, all the factions in the village, from right to the left, political as well as family camps, gathered to defeat the fundamentalists.
Tuesday night they succeeded. Aref Hamdan, the candidate of the secular camp, beat the Moslem candidate by a tiny, 150-vote margin. One major reason for the victory was that the town’s Christians, who make up 18 percent of the population, were fearful of religious coercion by the fundamentalists.
The Moslems thus failed to win their second major Israeli stronghold. But Sheikh Kamal Hatib was pleased with the support his fledgling party received anyway. He said the results were promising.
Despite the disappointment in Kafr Kanna, the fundamentalists scored two other victories in Tuesday’s second round: in the Bedouin town of Rahat, near Beersheba, and in the Arab village of Jaljulya, near Kfar Sava.
The so-called “Arab triangle” bounded by Petach Tikva, Hadera and Afula is now more Moslem than ever before.
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