PA Chairman Abu Mazen announces the holding of elections with the participation of East Jerusalem residents • Precedents exist, but Prime Minister Netanyahu will decide after the election
Arguments on every front.
A policeman at the gate of the Palestinian Legislative Council compound, Ramallah
Photo:
IPI
The precedent already exists: in 1996, for the first time, the Arabs of East Jerusalem, which is part of sovereign Israel, participated in the Palestinian Authority elections.
It was a resounding taboo break.
Israel, led by Rabin and Peres, has in fact recognized the affiliation of the Arabs of the East City to the PA.
By implication, the official Israeli position, which later adhered to the unity of the city under Israeli sovereignty, was cracked for the first time.
A decade later, in 2005 and 2006, presidential and Palestinian council elections were held.
Sharon and Olmert, under heavy American pressure, also allowed East Jerusalem Arabs to vote.
Now, 15 years later, the Palestinians are demanding that Israel allow this for the fourth time.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will decide, but only after the Israeli elections. Meanwhile, the Americans are not involved, but it is estimated that this is temporary. The Biden administration is expected to side with the Palestinian demand to hold the elections in East Jerusalem as well.
Elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council are expected on May 22, but it is not inconceivable that there will be a turnaround in the plot at the last minute.
If Abu Mazen estimates that he is about to lose to Hamas, or if he estimates that the popular prisoner Marwan Barghouti will run out of prison and may overcome him - he will come down from the tall tree he climbed and postpone the election.
The scale will be the issue of the Arabs of East Jerusalem.
Abu Mazen will be able to do one of two things: to hang on to an Israeli refusal to involve the Arabs of the East City in the PA elections - a refusal that currently seems highly feasible;
Or to hang on to the "impossible" conditions, in his opinion, that Israel will set if and when it nevertheless agrees to involve the Arabs of the east of the city in the elections.
In the background hovers the story of those historic elections, 25 years ago, that may also be relevant to elections in the Palestinian Authority this year.
It mostly illustrates how complicated and sensitive the issue of voting for East City residents for both sides is.
Then, in 1996, it happened when the Oslo process was already bleeding.
At the Beit Lid junction, in Ramat Gan and in Jerusalem, suicide bombers exploded, and in the negotiating rooms, representatives of the PA and Israel were conducting a stubborn excavation on the issue of East Jerusalem.
Israel did everything in its power to humble the part of the Arabs of the east of the city at the polls.
The authority did everything to make it stand out.
The arguments went down to the smallest detail.
Where will the groove go?
The Palestinians demanded a vote at polling stations.
Israel insisted on voting at post offices.
The Palestinians wanted the post offices to sit out of action at the time of the vote, Israel asked them to continue working.
Another controversy arose when the Palestinians insisted that the members of their electoral commission transfer the ballots to the count in Ramallah, at the end of the day of voting.
Israel demanded that its postal officials do so.
At the height of the debate, the question of the structure of the ballot box was discussed between the parties.
Israel requested that the slot through which the envelopes be dangled be set on the side of the box, as mailboxes are built.
The Palestinians demanded that the slot be in the middle of the top of the box, as is customary at polling stations.
The Palestinians demanded that only the Palestinian voter ID card identify the voter.
Israel demanded a blue ID card.
Thus the argument lasted longer and longer, and in the end compromises were found.
The election took place.
Only a few of the voters, a few thousand, mostly sick and elderly, voted in five post offices in the east of the city.
The rest voted at the polls set up in Abu Dis, outside the city's municipal area and outside the Israeli sovereignty line.
The ballot boxes have an alternative name - not "ballot box" but "container".
Only 30 percent of eligible voters in the east of the city voted, compared to 70 percent in the other counties.
Many feared losing their status as Israeli residents and remained in their homes.
Others simply remained indifferent.
The low turnout highlighted the process of disconnection of East Jerusalem residents from the West Bank, a process that later intensified, with the construction of the fence in the first half of the millennium.
The political reality this time is different, both for Israel and for the Palestinians.
The demand to allow East Jerusalem Arabs to run in the elections, first in May in the Palestinian Legislative Council elections, and then in the July 31 presidential election, comes after the major reversal in the US position on Jerusalem status - after the Trump administration recognized Jerusalem as the Israeli capital The participation of East Jerusalem residents in the elections, say those around the Prime Minister, could obscure Israeli achievement and undermine Israel's sovereign status in Jerusalem.
On the other hand, the PA has the opposite motivation - to extract again from Israel and the new administration in Washington consent for the participation of East Jerusalem Arabs in these elections, precisely to produce an effect that will dull and weaken American recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Hamas is playing a bunker,
but in the background, at least from Israel's point of view, there is another serious obstacle: Hamas' active participation in the election process. Hamas made life difficult for Abu Mazen when he accepted most of the conditions for holding the elections, provided he could take part in them. Originally, Abu Mazen relied on Hamas' refusal, but the organization decided to play the chief's game.
Israel, say political sources in Jerusalem, has no interest in allowing a move in which Hamas, a terrorist organization, is one of the key players in the campaign, and may even win it. For Israel, this is not possible - neither in Judea nor in Jerusalem.
The problem, the same factors explain, is twofold. Internally - within the PA, and externally - the position of the European Union and the United States. It turns out that it is already difficult to return the horses to the stable. Abu Mazen's decision, which even signed presidential decrees on the matter, has already been implemented, and many within the PA are also eagerly awaiting elections, with the presidential candidates already warming up and trying to improve positions.
One example of this is the statements of senior Fatah official, Jibril Rajoub, who himself aspires to the throne, Abu Mazen's representative for talks currently taking place in Cairo between all Palestinian factions. Rajoub clarified a few days ago that the PA also seeks coordination with Hamas. On the issue of Jerusalem, and that the East Jerusalem candidates for the Palestinian Legislative Council may be agreed in advance between the two sides, so that there will be no active confrontation in Jerusalem. Rajoub also promised that the residents of East Jerusalem will participate in the election even if Israel opposes it.
How exactly will that happen? The PA's election committee explained this week that Jerusalem Arabs with Israeli residency may vote at polling stations located on the outskirts of the city, ie in the border areas, some of which are within the city limits and some outside, such as Kfar Aqab and Ba-Ram, and even Abu Dis, whose end is in Jerusalem, but the vast majority are out of town.
One way or another, the Central election Commission of Palestinians have already announced that Palestinians from east Jerusalem who carry blue Israeli identity card, will be able to stand for election and vote without being registered as a voter.
the pressure on Abu Mazen is provided as well as external, both from EU countries, Beck Most also from the US, which is already scattering hints on the matter. From the European point of view, the story is simple: the PA chairman is required to prove through elections that the Palestinian public supports him. Elections are an international condition for the continuation of financial aid on the part of the union, and possibly also for the renewal of American aid (aid that Trump froze). The Biden administration, which seeks to coordinate its moves with Europe, also hints to the Palestinians that it would prefer to renew a political dialogue with an elected Palestinian leadership, rather than with a leadership that has ruled without elections for 15 years.
In the face of this sentiment, Israel is trying to remind the Americans in a quiet discourse of the complex reality of the territory, emphasizing Hamas' power in the Palestinian public, including the possibility of winning elections and bringing to the West Bank what it has accomplished in the Gaza Strip. Such a state or entity will be a direct threat to Israel, and will require Israel to change its security and military deployment in Judea and Samaria and adapt it to a different reality.
Israel is currently making it clear to its friends around the world and anyone who urges the PA elections that it will not accept further Gaza growth. Kfar Saba, Netanya and Hadera.
Proceeds political?
Hamas, in turn, makes sure the meantime, the passive stance. Contrary to earlier expectations of Abbas, Hamas does not insist on elections in East Jerusalem. the organization does not want this issue will torpedo the elections.
Cairo is conducted in recent days long Internal Palestinian discourse ahead of the elections, with the participation of 14 organizations, the main ones being Fatah led by Jibril Rajoub and Hamas led by Saleh Aruri and Yahya al-Sinwar. Delegations of the Popular Front and the Democratic Front are also present in Cairo.
Hamas leaders call on the Palestinian population in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to participate in the elections. Hamas leader Yahya al-Sinwar has in recent days released a video in which he encourages participation in the elections, and also threatens Israel and warns it not to intervene. Al-Sinwar also warns that if Israel tries to torpedo the election, Hamas will take care to disrupt the upcoming Israeli election. The organization included in its video images from an election rally in Ashkelon in 2020, from which Netanyahu was rushed to a safe haven following rocket fire from Gaza.
Meanwhile, other options are emerging, different from those feared by Sinwar, which talk about Israel agreeing for the fourth time to the residents of the city's east in the PA elections, but asking for a political return. One scenario is that in exchange for an Israeli agreement, the Biden administration will publicly clarify, perhaps even in writing, that it has adhered to the statements and commitments of its predecessor (President Trump) regarding Jerusalem and its recognition as the capital of Israel.
Another scenario, the likelihood of which is not high, paints Saudi Arabia as having reached Israeli agreement. The consideration will be a "payment" to Israel in the currency of upgrading relations with it. The idea was also recently put in writing in a paper by the Reut Institute, where it was written, among other things: "There may be a WIN-WIN opportunity for Israel, the United States and Saudi Arabia to implement a 'trade off' between voting in Jerusalem and normalization with Saudi Arabia. "Saudi Arabia may agree to normalize its relations with Israel in exchange for a political achievement that Israel will give it, in the form of allowing Palestinians to vote in East Jerusalem."
If Israel does agree, after its elections, to the participation of East Jerusalem Arabs in the PA elections, we will probably witness a vote. The individual litigation between the parties in the previous three rounds, where this was possible.