Shortly after Abaye Zode was elected as his neighborhood committee chairman he told residents where he lived that ethnic hatred was driving them apart.

"If we fight between us," Zode told them, "then our neighborhood will never be worth anything."

Zode, 26, is Israel's only Ethiopian-born neighborhood chairman (there are 160 neighborhood committees in Israel). A graduate of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee's Aleh community leadership program, he also serves as advisor on Ethiopian Affairs to the Mayor of Rehovot.

Zode represents the Kiryat Moshe neighborhood of Rehovot. Of the 8,000 residents in the impoverished neighborhood nearly half are Ethiopian Jews, while the remainder are new immigrants from the former Soviet Union and veteran Israelis from oriental communities.

"The residents of Kiryat Moshe have heeded my call to stop the squabbling," said Zode. "They are all behind me whether they are of Russian speaking, Moroccan or Yemenite origin. We are all Jews. We have set an example for all of Israel."

In fact a considerable percentage of Kiryat Moshe's non-Ethiopian population voted for Zode. For although 48% of the neighborhood's residents are of Ethiopian origin, their much higher birth rate means that they made up only 34% of eligible voters.

Zode reached Israel in 1990 as a teenager with his divorced mother Debas from Ethiopia's Gondar province. The following year Operation Solomon brought to Israel his brother and sister as well as his father Mulat, who is re-married, and his three half-brothers and sisters.

"It has been very difficult for my parents to adjust to life in Israel," he said. "To be honest they still have not properly adapted. But my generation can enjoy the opportunities that the country has to offer."

For his first four years in Israel Zode lived in the Netivot Absorption Center in the Negev before moving to Rehovot in 1994.

"For the first year I was in love with Israel," Zode recalled. "But then I started being disappointed. After all we had always dreamed of living in Jerusalem. And there we were stuck in a small, hot Negev development town. But I shrugged off despair and alienation and decided that I could still build a good life for myself, and my family and my community."

After graduating high-school Zode enlisted in the IDF in 1995, serving for three years as an aircraft technician in the air force, reaching the rank of First Sergeant. Completing his army service in 1998 Zode settled back in Rehovot determined to improve the lot of the Kiryat Moshe community.

"I worked as a volunteer in the local community center," he recounted. "Together with a group of friends we converted an abandoned bomb shelter into a youth club. But I lacked direction. Then JDC and Aleh came along."

After successfully completing the Aleh course last year, Zode's highly articulate advocacy on behalf of Rehovot's Ethiopian community, enhanced, sharpened and made more effective by the JDC program came to the notice of city hall and he was offered the job as the Mayor's advisor.

He became bashful when asked if he planned a future career as a politician. "At the moment I'm focusing on my studies," explained Zode who is enrolled in a B.Sc. degree program at Ben Gurion University of the Negev's Achva College starting in October. What is he studying? Politics – of course.