Word: gaydamak
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...Gaydamak's advisers recently met with Walid Dajani, a hotel manager from a prominent Old City family. Dajani told TIME, "I said I would give Gaydamak the balcony of my hotel to speak to us Arabs, but only if he came out against Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem. His advisers never came back." Dajani adds, "They know that any Jewish candidate who said those things would have no chance of winning on the Jewish side." Two days before the election, Gaydamak offered to halt the demolition of Arab houses in East Jerusalem...
...Gaydamak is setting his sights on Jerusalem's secular and less Orthodox Jews. But the Russian faces competition from Nir Barkat, 49, a software multimillionaire and city councilman. They will end up splitting the secular votes, with Barkat scooping up the larger share. Barkat has swung to the right, promising to build more Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem. Gaydamak thinks his only chance is to make inroads among the city's Arab community...
...idea of Gaydamak emerging as a champion of the city's Arabs baffles his Beitar football fans. The team's supporters are known for shouting "Death to Arabs" during matches. His fans say that while the Russian might know his football, he is clueless about Jerusalem's complexities (nor does he speak much Hebrew). Plus, they say, his advisers are selling him all sorts of crazy schemes so they can grab his shekels. Gaydamak, they say, may be a billionaire in Russia, but in Israel he is a freier, or sucker. (See pictures of Euro 2008 soccer games...
...Gaydamak's craziest scheme may be relying on the Arab vote. Not only does he risk losing his Beitar supporters, but traditionally, Jerusalem's Arabs seldom vote. Over the decades, the Palestinian leadership has urged Arabs to boycott municipal elections, claiming that it would validate Israel's "illegal" claim to the city. But the city's Arabs lose everything by refusing to vote. Without anyone lobbying for them on the city council, Arabs receive just one-tenth of municipal services - they have fewer schools, clinics, playgrounds and road repair - despite paying taxes...
...beaten up by Palestinian militants. Word of the attacks then spreads swiftly around East Jerusalem, and other Arabs stay away. Beitar's fans may be right: the millions of shekels lavished on the Arab vote may be wasted, as they could be spent on new star players for Gaydamak's luckless team. Meanwhile, Jerusalem, the capital of three monotheistic faiths, could drift toward religious intolerance. As columnist Tom Segev writes glumly in the newspaper Haaretz, "All that is left is to envy those Jerusalemites who have already left the city...