Who Will Sit in Mayor’s Chair is Question Stirring Jerusalem

With the Jerusalem municipal elections barely five days old, political circles here are busy conjecturing as to the next occupant of the Mayor’s chair held by Ragheb Bey Nashashibi, Moslem leader, for the past fifteen years.

In the opinion of many of the mantle should fall upon the shoulders of Dr. Hussein Fakhri Khaldi who, although one of the leading members of the Opposition Party which Nashashibi heads, had pitted himself as the Mayor’s opponent in the same ward, and wrested the councillorship from him by a majority of 150 votes. On the other hand, there are those who feel that the Mayor should be a Jew in view of their preponderance among the capital’s ratepayers and their share in the municipal councillorships of six out of the twelve.

UNITED LIST VICTORIOUS

The United Jewish list had a clear victory over their opponents. At first there were twelve candidates for the six vacancies for Jews, but three of the Opposition nominees withdrew, leaving three backed by the Revisionists to compete with the three United Jewish platformers in the wards for which they were standing. The representative Jewish institutions, including the Vaad Leumi, Jerusalem Jewish Community Council, Hamizrachi and Agudath Israel, had chosen these “official” candidates.

According to a Revisionist statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, they gained forty per cent. of the votes cast in the three wards in which polling took place. There were 1,225 votes in the three divisions, of which 492 were for the Revisionist-supported candidates. At the last elections to the Assephath Hanivcharim (Elected Assembly), the Revisionists had a ratio of twenty-two per cent. of the polling, so that their absolute increase was eighteen per cent. They now claim, too, that the United Jewish List was given about 160 Arab votes, so that actually their percentage could be given as fifty. Moreover, the Agudath Israel—which wields a great influence over Jerusalem Jewish affairs—took part in the elections this time though they had not shared in the Assephath Hanivcharim elections, as they are not members of Knesseth Israel.

LAY DEFECT TO BOYCOTT

Their defeat, declare the Revisionists, was due to the fact that they had decided to boycott the Municipal elections, and were not sufficiently prepared for the campaign supporting their candidates.

The excitement among the Arabs as a consequence of Ragheb Bey’s defeat, (he once boasted that he could, if he so desired, remain Mayor of Jerusalem “for life”) has by no means subsided. The Mejlessein Party (led by the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al Husseini) is certain that Dr. Khaldi will become Mayor.

It may be pointed out that Hussein Khaldi, a former Government Health Department official who resigned in order to stand for municipal councillor, is not a member of the Husseini party. He has long been in the Opposition with the rest of his large and important family. But the Husseinis were eager to seize upon his nomination as a means of “getting their own back” against Ragheb Nashashibi, between whom and the Mufti there is personal enmity, and they would have supported a Sudanese negro if he had stood for nomination and had some chance of success. Despite this, Khaldi has come to be regarded as a Husseini man which is an utterly wrong reading of the local political situation.

No doubt a split within the Opposition Party is threatened as a result of this usurpation by a hitherto minor leader of the mayoral prerogatives of Ragheb Nashashibi. But even that split may yet be averted.

There are now three Nashashibi and three Husseini factionalists on the Council. Of the former there are Jacob Farradj (former vice-mayor) and Anastas Hanania, both Christians, and Hassan Sidky Bey Dajany, Moslem. Of the Mufti’s supporters there are now Ibrahim Darwish, Saad el-Din El Khalili, and many also suppose Dr. Khaldi to be on this side.

Nashashibi is said to be priming some of his supporters to bring lawsuits to contest the validity of the elections. He alleges bribery of voters and other criminal and technical flaws in the polling procedure. Whether or not he will be successful in obtaining new elections or will have to swallow his defeat remains to be seen.