Hadera Mayor Zvi Gendelman returned to his office July 25 surrounded by several dozen supporters and feeling reinvigorated. It was his first time back after being suspended from office for a month and a half.

Gendelman, a brigadier general in the reserves, was arrested in early June together with other prominent figures in the municipality on suspicion of bribery, fraud and the violation of public trust. The very fact that this highly regarded officer was brought to court for an extension of his arrest left a bitter feeling. The main reason he won the 2013 election in the first place was because he waged a campaign against corruption in his city. Now, he is allegedly guilty of it, too.

Hadera citizens are no strangers to corruption scandals. In 2005, their previous mayor — Yisrael Sadan (1998-2005) — was convicted of bribery and sent to prison. Stepping in to replace him was Haim Avitan, but just before the 2013 election, he, too, came under suspicion of bribery, which led to his arrest and interrogation. Then he ran against Gendelman in the last election and lost. This left the people of Hadera feeling like they had just entered a new era free of bribery in politics. In 2015, the State Attorney’s Office decided to close its case against Avitan, who later claimed that “Gendelman stole the election.” Now, Gendelman himself is in trouble. He was arrested and later kept under house arrest for a lengthy period.

In an interview with the Kan TV network on the day he returned to office, Gendelman claimed that political forces were behind his interrogation and announced that he was planning to run for another term in the upcoming municipal elections on Oct. 30. There is a phenomenon in Israel in which the heads of local government who get entangled in criminal charges will not hesitate to run again in the next round of elections. Events in Hadera bring this issue right back to the forefront of the public agenda.