Tewfik Ziad, the Communist-backed candidate, was elected Mayor of Nazareth yesterday by an overwhelming two-thirds majority of the votes. His Democratic Front, an alliance of the pro-Moscow Rakah Communists and local professionals and academicians; captured 11 of the 17 city council seats, assuring Communist control of the largest Arab city in Israel. The Labor Party won four seats and a list affiliated with the National Religious Party two.
About 75 percent of Nazareth’s nearly 20,000 eligible voters went to the polls despite heavy rains. The voting was orderly and the police reinforcements sent into Nazareth had little to do. The Communist list swept the field, taking between 70-80 percent of the votes cast at each of the 26 polling stations. When the results were announced at about 2 a.m. this morning, Ziad and his jubilant supporters drove through the rain-drenched city in a shouting, horn-honking victory celebration.
The victory of Ziad, who is a Rakah member of the Knesset, was a foregone conclusion even before the voting began. The clumsy, heavy-handed attempts by Israeli government officials to influence Nazareth voters to reject the Communist list in favor of the Labor Party-backed candidate, George Sa’ad, backfired and probably increased the size of Ziad’s victory, Israeli observers said today.
The Nazareth elections were viewed with great concern by Israeli officials. Apart from the fact that Israel’s major Arab population center and a town with deep religious associations for Christians is now governed by Communists and their sympathizers, Ziad’s victory is expected to fan dormant nationalist passions among Israel’s Arab citizens. Ziad, 46, shocked many Israelis after the Yom Kippur War by writing a poem extolling the Egyptian crossing of the Suez Canal. As a member of the Knesset, he is sworn to support the State. But many of his followers make no secret of their sympathy for the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Raanan Cohen, head of the Labor Party’s Arab department, said the election results were not a victory for the Rakah faction but a manifestation of the Arab-Israeli conflict that Rakah was exploiting for its own purposes, aided by the present anti-Israel climate in the international area. Rakah has won popularity in Israeli Arab circles for its outspoken support of Arab nationalism.
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