Next year the municipal elections are due to take place in Jerusalem - they are held every 5 years. All residents are entitled to vote including the Arab residents. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Palestinians have always boycotted the elections - in 2013 fewer than 1% of Palestinian in the city voted.
The vote increased slightly in 2018 when Ramadan Dabash, a civil engineer and a mukhtar - an Arab community leader - formed a party called Jerusalem, My Town and received 3,001 votes, some 1.2% of the 250,675 ballots cast in Jerusalem, his total including votes from the Jewish community - well short of the 8,086 votes needed to gain a seat on the council.
Since Palestinians make up approximately 38% of the city’s residents, they could easily elect several members to the city’s 31-seat municipal council. Such representation would have had a significant effect on Jerusalem’s municipal affairs, especially budget allocations and priorities, and Jewish settlement in Palestinian neighbourhoods; it could also potentially serve as a legitimate voice of the Jerusalemite Palestinians if and when diplomatic negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians are resumed.
Why do so few Palestinians vote?
The Palestinian political leadership deter people from voting as they see it as legitimising Israel's claim to East Jerusalem and diminishing the voters' Palestinian identity. This attitude sees them and political activists opposing any Israeli plans for improvements in East Jerusalem, such as recent opposition to a $20 million sports centre currently being built.
In 2018 the Mufti of al-Aqsa Mosque claimed that participating in the elections is like removing oneself from “the religion, the nation, and the homeland.” Palestinian Christian leaders issued similar pronouncements and a religious institution issued a legal opinion against running or voting in them.
Media campaigns suggest that it is “better to suffer from neglect than to become part of the occupation," and "Jerusalem belongs to every Palestinian and to the entire Arab world - to vote in the elections is to give up on Jerusalem not only in one’s own name, but in name of entire Arab people.”
Such incendiary comments inevitably result in threats and violence towards those who wish to vote - and even more so to those who wish to stand for election. Palestinian activists threatened violence in Facebook posts against people planning to participate in the elections. After that, street violence against those campaigning increased. Volunteers handing out leaflets calling on people to vote were attacked; a campaign worker was hospitalised.
Ramadan Dabash revealed that he was a victim of violence from other Palestinians. “Someone tried to kidnap my son, another person tried to run me over, but none of this stopped me,” he said. “But as we see from the results, it did keep Palestinians from voting.”
Another Jerusalemite, Aziz Abu Sarah, also formed his own party in 2018 called Al-Quds Lana, Jerusalem is Ours, and also decided to run for mayor, but dropped out after threats against him and members of his party.
“We need to preserve our Palestinian identity, find solutions to classroom shortages in schools, stop home demolitions, make building permits available and deal with many other issues," he said.
Abu Sarah was an active member of the Fatah youth movement in high school, frequently writing pamphlets for mass publication and organising protests. A few years later his brother died after spending a year in an Israeli prison, so he began working at the Parents Circle, a NGO that brings together Israelis and Palestinians who have lost loved ones in the conflict - his work there involved talking to Israeli students about his life story and the conflict. He's also a successful businessman with contacts all over the world - the ideal political candidate.
“Many of us faced threats,” he said. “My brother, my brother’s son-in-law, nephew and other family members received phone calls from anti-normalisation activists, threatening to harm me if I do not withdraw from the elections."
“I hope you will be shot by live bullets you vile man. This is the minimum of what must be done to traitors like you,” was one online message from a prominent activist. On one occasion Abu Sarah and his colleagues were pelted with eggs. Next day a legal adviser at the Al-Quds Human Rights Clinic raged, “They were hit by eggs. I wish the eggs would turn into bullets.”
Abu Sarah believes that the violence was coordinated by the PA. “Palestinian officials are afraid that they will lose their hold on us, that we will become more Israeli and less Palestinian,” he said. “That is ridiculous. I am a proud Palestinian and a proud Jerusalemite. I would not trade my identity for economic benefits. But I do not trust the Palestinian Authority, which is corrupt and does not represent me or other young Palestinians, who want to have a future here.”
He also felt his campaign was neglected by the Palestinian media who scarcely gave them coverage, with one TV interview being cancelled at the last minute, apparently at the behest of the PA.
Ramadan Dabash said, “The results show the pressure against voting in the elections won. I think there is a readiness in East Jerusalem to participate and vote in these elections." Despite the apparent success of the intimidation campaign, he remains optimistic. “While we did not succeed in changing the overall behavior of voters, we did succeed in substantially increasing the number of voters in the eastern part of the city in relation to previous years. I hope we have started a trend that will continue to grow and translate into to a much higher turnout in the next election.”
“We are not telling anyone to become Israeli, change their religion, give up al-Aqsa Mosque or join the Israeli army,” said Dabash. “We are saying that we need to make sure we receive better services. We need to have a voice on the city council to fight for our rights.”
One of his supporters said, “The Palestinian Authority has always said that we should forgo the struggle for a better standard of living and our civil rights, because it would mean legitimising the Israeli occupation.”
But, she argued, “the Palestinian Authority hasn’t done anything for us, either. They use Jerusalem as a symbol to maintain their position in the Arab world as the defenders of the holy city. But they don’t care about us, the real people who live here and love this city.”
While the PA say that voting is collaborating with the Israelis, Abu Sarah believes that “abandoning the city and not building up our communities is collaborating with the Israelis.” He and Dabash “made a dent in the Palestinian mentality,” he argued. “Next time, people will vote.”
A recent opinion poll suggested 58% of East Jerusalemites agreed with the idea that they should elect members to the city council to promote their interests, 14% objected to the proposition, and 28% were undecided.
“The poll shows that Palestinians in East Jerusalem understand they can receive better services from gaining representation in the municipality,” said Dabash. “But I expect fewer than 58 percent of them will participate in them because there are still strong calls for a boycott.”
Dabash said he could imagine 70,000 people voting for his party, but would still be pleased if 10,000 or 20,000 people turn out to do so. If there is a similar turnout in the election as the last one, which saw 35.9% of the city cast ballots, 70,000 votes would give Dabash’s party 9 places on the 31-member council.
In recent years more than 10,000 Israeli Arabs have moved to Jerusalem, working in well-paid jobs and living in what is lazily termed West Jerusalem, in so-called Jewish areas. Their participation in the elections could be crucial but they would need the right candidate and party to attract them. Dabash may not be that man, as even some of his supporters acknowledge: “He is married to four wives and has 12 children. I am watching my society fall apart, and I feel torn between my values as a progressive human being and my identity as a Palestinian Jerusalemite. East Jerusalem is in despair and religious extremists are taking over. Sexual harassment and other forms of gender-based violence are everywhere, but there is no one to turn to, certainly not the Israeli police.”
A campaign to persuade more Palestinians to vote has recently been launched but pressure needs to be put on the PA to change their usual negative stance and instead put the needs of the people first. Persuasion would be the best route - if Palestinians in relatively large numbers were to participate in the Jerusalem elections, they could have the determining votes in deciding who will be mayor of Jerusalem. That could enable them to negotiate a deal that would provide them with the kind of benefits that the Jewish religious populations in Jerusalem succeed in receiving. They would be the determining votes for the elected mayor and the payoff could be huge. It would be a council that truly reflects Jerusalem’s bi-national reality.
And that could just be the first step. If the PA and the short-sighted political activists could be persuaded to give up their campaign of negativity, just think what could happen - a Jerusalem council with a powerful Arab voice and a large enough voting bloc to shift the balance of power in the city council. And if the population could be persuaded to unite behind one candidate, by no means certain, even an Arab mayor is not beyond the realms of possibility. Either of those outcomes would present the Israeli government with real problems, and problems created by peaceful, legitimate means rather than through violence.
It would be welcome if the self-proclaimed Palestinian supporters in the west spoke out and put pressure on the PA to allow people to vote. Unfortunately they seem only to listen to those who support violence, condemn any contact as 'normalisation' and seek the destruction of Israel. I predict they will be silent again.
The boycott of elections has contributed nothing to advancing Palestinian rights in Jerusalem and it is time to try something new. The dangers of losing Jerusalem are too much for Palestinians not to try now. Participating in local elections in Jerusalem does not mean recognising Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem. It is important to emphasise that Palestinians are not giving up their rights as Palestinians by voting in Jerusalem, rather they are using their rights and expressing their loyalty to Palestine.
Allowing Palestinians to vote in the election would result in a powerful Palestinian presence in the Jerusalem Council. The Israeli government would either have to accept it or resort to gerrymandering the city boundaries. The PA and their acolytes should be encouraging people to vote, not preventing them.
