As I have been reporting for many weeks, Palestinian leaders have been using Mahmoud Abbas’ promise of new elections at the UN as a pretense to ask the world to pressure Israel to allow Arabs in Jerusalem to participate in the elections.
This past week Palestinian prime minister Shtayyeh met with representatives of the German Green Party and the director of the Middle East and North Africa Department at the British Foreign Office, where he said, “We cannot accept any situation in which elections are prevented in Jerusalem just like any of the Palestinian cities and governorates. Holding elections in Jerusalem is a national and political priority and not holding them means dedicating their separation from the rest of the Palestinian components.”
Ma’an’s editor wrote an article about the importance of elections in Jerusalem. The Palestinian Authority has formally requested that Israel allow elections in Jerusalem, and has not received a response – and might not until Israel forms a government, he fears.
In the past, Israel banned any campaigning in Jerusalem altogether. For previous elections, Israel allowed ballot boxes to be placed in post offices in some Arab areas of Jerusalem, where they were transported to the PA-administered territories afterwards and counted. This way Israel considered them to be absentee ballots and Palestinians can claim that Jerusalem Arabs were allowed to vote. But this time the push seems to be to allow full campaigning and polling places, something the current Israeli government would not allow – but the PA loves to use the international community, especially Europeans, to pressure Israel on Jerusalem in any way possible.
I am still skeptical that any elections will ever take place, but the pressure on Israel will exist whether they do or not – and, as we have seen, that is a major goal of the elections farce to begin with.
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