The election campaigns for local authorities brought hope for secular and religious residents of Beit Shemesh that they could finally stop their city’s ultra-Orthodox trend. They joined forces and were convinced they could unseat mayor Moshe Abutbul, a member of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party. According to official results, they lost with a margin of only 956 votes, but they claim that the results were forged and have called for holding another round of elections in the city.

Thus a week after the Oct. 22 elections, it’s as if Beit Shemesh is still in the midst of the campaign. The opposition to Abutbul is leading a series of protests and intends to appeal to the court to nullify the results. Israeli police are investigating suspicions of crimes, and have already revealed dozens of fake ID cards and arrested eight people.

All of Beit Shemesh is immersed in an atmosphere of division and suspicion, torn between extremist ultra-Orthodox groups and secular and moderately religious Jews, locked in a hopeless culture war. Even if the claims of fraud are not substantiated, thousands of secular residents will continue to live with the sense that their city was stolen in this election. This isn’t exactly the atmosphere in which rehabilitation can begin in the town, which has been declining for years, turning poorer and more separatist.

More than 95,000 residents live in Beit Shemesh today, a third of them ultra-Orthodox. The unevenly high birth rate and the positive immigration trend on the part of the ultra-Orthodox are expected to make Beit Shemesh a city with a secular minority within less than a generation. The implications of this process on the quality of life in the city are great: The socio-economic decline will continue, the educational system will become predominantly ultra-Orthodox and the cultural life will change entirely.