Yona Yahav, candidate for mayor of Haifa, votes in the local elections, Dania neighborhood polls, February 27, 2024/Yoav Itiel
A gray morning dawned on Haifa last night (Tuesday).
Wind and torrential rain opened the day for the few who dared to get up.
Those who got up early yesterday were probably only those who had a job at the polling stations, at the municipality or at one of the emergency and rescue agencies.
All the rest, pull another two or three hours under the duvet or just in the heating at home.
Outside, the polls opened already at 07:00, but last night's Haifa voters are compared to a child who has to be taken out of the house to school on a cloudy day - they eventually went to the polls, but it was evident that they had no desire.
This electoral system did not put in front of it some star team to be clear from, there was no feeling of some kind of news in the air.
Considering that the polls all indicated that the mayor of the failed city, the architect Einat Kalish Rotem, is going home, and the person who will replace her is apparently one of three lawyers with stereotyped and unattractive messages who did not know how to differentiate themselves from each other.
There was also no feeling of obligation to go out to vote, and considering the clearly unattractive weather, to just go out to the street or to the public garden, who knows what beckoned to the residents of the northern city.
On the way to a second round in Haifa/photo processing, Elad Malka, Micah Brickman
Those who got up early yesterday probably worked at the polling stations, everyone else took another two or three hours.
Wild boar in the city of Haifa/ShutterStock
"The empty streets, empty shops and empty polling stations are because of the general atmosphere, not because of indifference towards the elections," explained Ziggy Shaul in his shop in the center of the deserted Carmel.
The 92-year-old Ziggy, known to every Haifai as one of Maccabi Haifa's staunch fans, and as an optometrist who owns a Haifa optic chain bearing his name, "There is a lot to change and fix in the city. The roads need to be fixed and the pigs removed and there is a lot to protect, especially the spirit of the city The character of our city is liberal, and what we want is a liberal administration for the city."
But in the meantime, while the rest of the Haifaites were still debating whether to leave the house, long lines stretched out at the ultra-Orthodox polling stations in the city.
The city's 13,000 ultra-orthodox residents, who belong to three communities, signed attractive agreements with the candidates David Etzioni and Yaakov Borbosky, and set out to fulfill their part in the agreement that should bring another five years of attention to the municipality.
In the messages sent to the cell phones of the ultra-Orthodox, they urged them in Yiddish to reach 100 percent voting in the mitzvot of the rabbis.
In such a situation of high percentages of votes among the ultra-Orthodox compared to indifference among the rest of the city's residents, Etzioni and Borovsky narrow the gap.
At noon, Yona Yahav, the favorite in these elections, by a considerable margin, refined his message in this spirit.
"The turnout is low," he announced in a special statement in the middle of the day, "I appeal to my Haifa brothers, who want a democratic, liberal and free Haifa - you must vote! Bring your families and friends to the polls and vote. We will defeat the extremists!"
It is not known if the message woke up the indifferent Haifa voters, but if a second round takes place, and at the time of writing these lines it is estimated that it will take place, and if Yahav will be a part of it, and at the time of writing these lines there is no reason to assume otherwise, then this differentiation will be critical to his campaign against Etzioni and Borovsky in the back of his head
Yona Yahav and his wife Rebecca vote in the local elections for mayor of Haifa, February 27, 2024/Flash 90, no
David Etzioni votes in the local elections for mayor of Haifa, February 27, 2024/Flash 90, no
At noon the sun came out and along Sirkin Street in Hadar Carmel you could already see people shopping, eating and drinking.
"Not a larger amount than a normal day," they said in the hummus bardichev along the street.
Even inside the market structure there was normal to sparse traffic.
Talfiot Market's goods have no competitors, the best strawberry per kilo in Israel for only 20 shekels.
But according to Klich's script, the market was supposed to be the pinnacle of the preservation and restoration of the Bauhaus in the city.
Five years have passed since the architect entered the mayor's office, but the promised renovation of the building, which was inaugurated in 1940, has not yet been completed.
The merchants she promised because they gave their consent to move to the upper floor so that she could finally start renovating the lower one, told me without blinking, "We are not suckers. We have bided our time. First we will see who will take the city, we will reach agreements with him and then we will see."
The market is just one point where Klish lost her support in the city.
According to the polls, between 90-95% of her supporters who gave her more than 50% of the votes in 2018 left her.
She herself claims that she does not believe in polls, but when she came with her husband to vote at the polling station of the community center in the Ramat Sapir neighborhood where they live, she said she was optimistic. "Today the real poll is being conducted.
We'll wait a few hours and see."
"She is very much in favor of small businesses and always helped us a lot."
Einat Kalish Rotem votes in the elections for the presidency of Haifa/Yoav Itiel
There is another handful who still believe that she is the good news for the city of Carmel.
The manager of one restaurant on Sirkin Street told me that she voted for her and added the familiar mantras, "Her plans are long-term. Cleaning stables takes time, we didn't give her freedom of action. She is very much in favor of small businesses and has always been very helpful to us."
We still don't know the results of the ultimate survey and what was said, it seems that there are already some who miss it.
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