Jerusalem Mayor Barkat Seeks New Term in Race Arabs Sit Out

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat seeks re-election today in a race whose two main candidates reject any shared sovereignty over the holy city at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Almost all of the city’s Arab residents will sit it out.

Barkat, 54, a technology millionaire seeking his second term as an independent candidate, says Israel should make no territorial concessions in Jerusalem and Jews should feel free to settle in largely Arab neighborhoods in the city’s eastern sector. Palestinians claim that area, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, as the capital of a future independent state, while the current Israeli government says the entire city must remain the country’s capital.