The Yesha Council is composed of roughly two dozen local and regional council heads representing all Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Its members are young and old, religious and secular, Ashkenazi and Mizrahi. All are male.

The lack of female representatives is not unique to communities over the Green Line: Just six out of 256 local Israeli government heads are women. But the disparity is even sharper in the conservative-leaning West Bank, where just one woman has served as mayor in over half a century.

But in the upcoming local elections on October 30, three candidates are determined to shatter the glass ceiling that was put back in place when Daniella Weiss stepped down in 2007 after ten years as Kedumim Local Council chairwoman.

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In the southern West Bank, Shosh Adar is running for Har Hebron Regional Council chair; in the central West Bank, Yael Ben Yashar is running for Beit El Local Council chair; and in the northern West Bank, Ruti Spitzer is running for Karnei Shomron Local Council chair.

As if the prospect of elbowing into the male-dominated political arena weren’t daunting enough, the three women will be facing off against incumbent council chairmen with more established ties to their communities as well as to the Israeli government.

The Times of Israel sat down with the three candidates to learn more about their campaigns, and discuss why they are such a rare phenomenon in the settlements and how they expect the issue to evolve in the coming years.

‘You won’t be getting a feminist remark from me’

Under current chairman Yochai Damari, Shosh Adar argues that the individual needs of the 19 communities in the Har Hebron Regional Council have been relegated to the back burner in favor of broader municipal projects.

“The municipality is more interested in its plans for 10 years from now than it is with managing the specific concerns of each community,” explained the 59-year-old mother of four.

Adar has been living in the Shim’a settlement for 27 years and has been working in the municipality for the past 15 of those: first as a judo and self-defense instructor for women and later as secretary of the infrastructure committee, chairwoman of the cultural committee and adviser to the regional council chairman on the advancement of the status of women.

Serving under Damari on the regional council committee for the past four years, Adar said her frustration with the chairman’s agenda was what drove her to submit her candidacy to replace him.

“We could have 40,000 residents by now, but instead we’re not even 10,000,” Adar lamented.

She argued that with no public housing in the regional council and with all new homes solely built for those with the money to buy, potential young families are forced to look elsewhere.

“Why shouldn’t young couples be allowed to rent (in the settlements)?” she asked.

Moreover, she said that the regional council’s minority of more secular residents, such as herself, have been neglected by the current municipality leadership — something she aims to address as chairwoman.

As for her gender, Adar asserted that it was a non-issue in the election. “I’ll be judged based on my actions. Not on anything else,” she said.

When pressed as to why female candidates were so rare in the settlements, Adar admitted that it was “a million dollar question” but expressed little interest in highlighting the matter on the campaign trail.

“I won’t come out with a post calling on women to vote for me because I’m a woman. If you’re looking for a feminist remark, you’re not going to get it from me,” Adar said.

She acknowledged that the political arena stands to gain from more gender balance, but said the move in that direction is already taking place, albeit slowly.

“Israel is only 70 years old and the settlement movement is just 50. Everything here is relative. Things are slowly changing. You’ll see a lot more women running in the coming years,” Adar concluded.

Equality, not radical feminism

Yael Ben Yashar appeared more comfortable addressing the issue, and said that from her experience campaigning in Beit El, the fact that she is a woman has served as an asset more than anything else.

“I am frequently hearing people tell me that a female local council head could be very refreshing and maybe bring a new outlook to the position,” she said, adding that such feedback to her candidacy had been coming from both men and women.

The 51-year-old mother of six said she thought about having her list for local council committee be entirely made up of women, but ultimately decided to have an equal number of men after worrying that residents would view such a decision “as something radical and feminist.”

She acknowledged that her candidacy is not something that all 6,100 residents of the religious settlement — which includes a small ultra-Orthodox population — are comfortable with. However, Ben Yashar asserted that only a “minority of a minority” oppose a female local council chair on principle, and that they are far outnumbered by those who “specifically want to vote for me because I am a woman.”

Ben Yashar added that she had approached two former Beit El chief rabbis who both gave her candidacy their blessing.

As for explaining why her candidacy is such a rarity, Ben Yashar suggested it had to do with the fact that families in religious settlements tend to have more children and that mothers tend to spend their younger years at home rather than get politically involved.

Ben Yashar is running for local council head after serving as spokeswoman under incumbent chairman Shai Alon. She said the lack of transparency and fiscal responsibility from the administration she represented was what compelled her to throw her hat in the ring.

Ben Yashar criticized Alon for taking out over NIS 40 million ($10.93 million) in loans that Beit El taxpayers will be forced to pay off long after he leaves office.

“It’s excellent that Beit El is being developed and that we are investing in the town, but it has to be done proportionally and pragmatically, not all at once,” she argued.

To that effect, she described her frustration with the project that Alon is advancing to build 300 housing units in the town as retribution for the government’s 2012 demolition of the illegal Givat Ulpana outpost.

While Ben Yashar made clear that she supported extensive construction in the settlements, she argued that Alon’s haste to inflate the numbers had some Beit El residents concerned over how so many new families moving in at once might impact the community’s character.

“Maybe it would have been smarter to build fewer homes, but with some of them being houses rather than just apartment buildings,” she speculated, arguing that families that move to the settlements aren’t looking to live in high-rises.

The settlement movement’s ambassador to the world

Frustration with a serving chairman’s city planning was also one of the reasons Ruti Spitzer decided to run for Karnei Shomron Local Council head.

During a tour last week through the northern West Bank settlement, the 43-year-old mother of six pointed out several long streets along which families lived on one side and unfinished buildings lined the other.

“The construction is not fenced off and it is incredibly dangerous for the kids living across the street — not to mention the fact that they are constantly breathing in all of that dust,” Spitzer said.

While she praised incumbent chairman Yigal Lahav for his efforts to develop Karnei Shomron substantially during his five years at the helm, the first-time candidate argued that “much of it was done without proper planning and execution.”

Spitzer said her decision to run culminated more than a decade of service within the community, including as head of the parents committee and head of the Karnei Shomron cultural center. She held the position for a year before stepping down six months ago due to disagreements with Lahav.

Until three years ago, she assumed those positions on the sidelines of her career as a medical department manager for assisted living facilities throughout the country.

Spitzer said that her experiences accompanying her 3-year-old nephew during his extensive cancer treatments in Jerusalem and Chicago inspired her to enter public service on a full-time basis.

“A small child who was able to show such strength during life’s most challenging moments reminded me that there is nothing that stands in the way of willpower,” she said. “The experience gave me a whole new perspective on life and on the importance of putting communal needs ahead of my own.”

While vowing to tend to the concerns of Karnei Shomron’s five distinct neighborhoods, Spitzer said she also intends on doing more to bring the entire town of 8,000 together after disputes between religious and secular residents of the mixed settlement have risen in recent years.

“I want to unite everyone so Karnei Shomron can continue to grow,” she said.

With regards to the novelty of her campaign as a female candidate, Spitzer took a view somewhere in between those shared by Adar and Ben Yashar.

“I’m not campaigning on the notion that I am a woman, but I have no issue with someone highlighting it, because I do want to encourage other women to join me,” she said.

Spitzer suggested that Israeli women have long refrained from running for council chair in the West Bank because the position also requires the ability to serve as an ambassador for the settlement movement to the Israeli government and the international community as well.

“Not that women aren’t capable of filling such a role,” she clarified. “On the contrary, I think a woman would be more fitting for the position, but it is just another field that women, who are new to the political arena, are expected to master.”

Making sure 50% of slackers are women

While they are not running for council chair like Adar, Ben Yashar and Spitzer, a number of women have been utilizing the upcoming elections to ensure a more egalitarian balance of political power in the settlements.

Activists like Nitza Farkash, for example, rather than encouraging women to run for the highest position in local governments, are focusing their efforts on the local council committees that serve underneath the chair.

“In the Binyamin Regional Council where I live, just three of the 32 representatives on the council committee are women,” said Farkash.

“It’s hard for me to look around the table at these meetings and see so few women. When you walk outside afterwards and see that we are 50% of the public, you realize just how much [the municipality] doesn’t reflect the reality.”

Farkash is among the leaders of a new campaign encouraging women in the central West Bank to run for council committees.

Similar campaigns have sprouted throughout the country, but the Eli resident — an observant woman who covers her hair — said that she had a hard time relating to them. “I see the women in those ads, but none of them look like me. Our effort seeks to address that feeling.”

An additional concern regarding entering local politics that Farkash said she regularly hears from her female neighbors has to do with the feeling that they don’t have enough time to perform the job effectively.

“I always respond by saying that there are about a third of the members on the council committee who are uninvolved and miss most sessions. I want 50% of those slackers to be women,” she explained half-jokingly.

“Just like there are men who don’t have enough time for the job, but do it anyway, the same should be for women.”

Farkash has sat for the past five years on the Binyamin Regional Council committee and hopes to serve as deputy chair if reelected.

While she expressed interest in one day running for council chair, she admitted that campaigning as a women in religious communities comes with unique challenges.

“The politics here unfold between Mincha and Maariv,” Farkash said, referring to the afternoon and evening prayer services, which are almost exclusively attended by men. “But during those times, I’m busy putting my kids to bed.”

Accordingly, Farkash suggested that she’d have to run a rather different campaign than the one to which residents of the Binyamin Regional Council are accustomed.

Candidates to head the central West Bank regional councils typically spend each Shabbat during election season visiting a different community and giving a Torah discourse or speech after prayer services — something that some synagogues in the West Bank do not allow women to do.

In addition, candidates often compete in local marathons, snapping photographs at the finish line that their campaigns then publicize as demonstration of their drive and determination. But in more religious communities, such pictures of women could be perceived as immodest and alienate voters.

Farkash suggested that if she were to run one day, she would campaign “more on her professional qualifications for the job and less on [her] personality and ego.”

Such a strategy has the potential of attracting a considerable number of voters, predicted Tamar Asraf, spokeswoman for the Binyamin Regional Council.

“If a serious woman were to run, she could very well win by not taking part in the battle of egos that the two men here are currently fighting,” she said, taking a shot at the mudslinging between the rival candidates for Binyamin Regional Council chair: Yisrael Gantz and Shilo Adler.

What’s your secret?

As the lone Israeli woman to serve as council chair in the West Bank, Daniella Weiss admitted that she has been approached by female candidates itching for advice on how she managed to shatter the glass ceiling.

“You need a lot of courage,” she said plainly.

The 73-year-old jumped on the national stage in 1987, when as head of the Gush Emunim settlement movement, she marched into Qalqilya with a number of other settler leaders and began smashing glass bottles against a wall .

The demonstration came shortly after Ofra Mozes and her son Tal were killed by a Palestinian terrorist who had hurled a Molotov cocktail at their vehicle outside the Palestinian city. Weiss’s picket was seen by many settlers as an act of protest against the Israeli government for not doing more to prevent such attacks, as well as an act of defiance against local Palestinians from a woman determined to make clear which party was in charge beyond the Green Line.

The incident was caught on camera and Weiss was arrested, convicted and given a six-month suspended sentence along with a NIS 2,500 ($683) fine. The demonstration also led to her ouster from Gush Emunim. Nonetheless, she fought her way back into settler leadership, winning the 1996 elections for Kedumim Local Council chair.

Weiss acknowledged the difficulties of the job, noting that the added layer of having to deal with the Israel Defense Forces as head of a council under military rule was something that local government heads within Israel proper were generally not forced to worry about.

“However, as gender roles continue to evolve, you will see more and more female leaders in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) in the very near future,” she said. “It’s only a matter of time.”