Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir is trying to cast Tuesday’s municipal elections as a referendum on his policy of no negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Shamir spoke at an election rally Sunday night in Haifa, where Likud is making a major effort to unseat the Labor administration that has dominated the port city for more than 40 years.
A vote for Likud will send a message to the world that Israel will not let the PLO determine its fate, Shamir told a cheering throng.
He referred to a statement in the Cabinet on Sunday by Vice Premier Shimon Peres, the labor Party leader, that a majority of Israelis now favor talks with the PLO. A recent poll put that number at 53 percent.
“This election must prove him wrong,” Shamir declared. “Every vote for the Likud means that Israel wants no truck with the murderers of our sons who want to destroy Israel,” he said.
Meanwhile, the political battle during the last week has been focused on a less apocalyptic issue: whether the voters were to get a paid holiday Tuesday.
The local elections — for mayors and town council members — are the first not to be held simultaneously with Knesset elections.
The Knesset passed a law last year establishing separate national and local elections. But it did not amend the law that mandates a national holiday on Election day.
FACTORIES TO REMAIN OPEN
Business leaders and economists say a second election holiday will cost industry about $1.5 million in wages paid for no work and another $500,000 in lost production.
A bill to abolish the holiday is bottled up in the Knesset Interior Committee. Its chairman, Yehoshua Matza of Likud, seems determined to delay action on the measure until it is too late to affect the outcome of Tuesday’s balloting.
Likud is convinced it will benefit at the polls if the voters have the day off.
But local chambers of commerce and the Industrialists and Employers will be open for business as usual Tuesday, regardless of the law.
They say they will give employees enough time to vote and will compensate them for the lost holiday with overtime pay or an alternative day off.
Banks will be closed, however, in compliance with the statutes.
Apart from the holiday issue, political observers report widespread apathy over the elections.
In Jerusalem, the crusty, veteran incumbent mayor, Teddy Kollek, seems unbeatable, though his Labor Party list may lose its majority in the City Council.
In Tel Aviv, several parties have fielded candidates to try to unseat Mayor Shlomo Lehat, a Likud maverick who is popular, despite charges that he wasted funds on beautification projects and raised rates above the allowable level.
Mayors and the heads of town councils are elected individually by direct ballot. Town council members are elected from party lists on the basis of proportional representation.
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