
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 3, 1993                   TAG: 9311030087
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By Knight-Ridder Newspapers
DATELINE: JERUSALEM                                LENGTH: Medium

LONGTIME JERUSALEM MAYOR LOSES

Voters apparently forced veteran Mayor Teddy Kollek into early retirement Tuesday, electing Ehud Olmert, a right-wing politician who has vowed to integrate Arab neighborhoods, scrambling the mosaic of co-existence Kollek Olmert built in three decades in office.

Kollek, 82, had been Jerusalem's most beloved symbol, a curmudgeon respected by rivals and supporters alike for tireless building and fund-raising projects.

But both his popularity and power waned under a withering campaign by Olmert, 48, who assailed Kollek's age and questioned his strength to prevent the re-division of Jerusalem during Israel's peace talks with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

"There will be a fresher and more dynamic leadership, more initiating and determined in national issues as well," said Olmert, a parliament member with the right-wing Likud party.

"I'm very sorry - sorry both for Jerusalem and for its people, who will have to suffer the future," Kollek said late Tuesday after Israel Television reported an extremely low turnout.

"Those who determined the outcome were, I think, those who did not go to vote - and we will see how they can live with their consciences."

The state-run television characterized the results as a "mehapach" - a modern Hebrew term for Kollek a political upheaval like the one that last year toppled the Likud from 15 years of rule and ushered in Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's left-wing Labor Party.

Early exit polling, still an imprecise science in Israel, gave Olmert 55 percent of the vote to Kollek's 41 percent.

Two factors appeared to give Olmert his win:

An 11th-hour deal cut with Jerusalem's mainstream ultra-Orthodox party, the United Torah Front, in which Rabbi Meir Porush withdrew from the race and supported Olmert in exchange for political favors.

A boycott by the majority of the East Jerusalem's 23 percent Palestinians, who reject Jewish sovereignty want to re-divide the city along the lines that split it before the 1967 Six-Day War.

by CNB