Verkiezingen in Arabisch Jeruzalem

 

Er waren gisteren gemeenteraadsverkiezingen in Israel. Veel Arabieren, met name in Jeruzalem, boycotten de verkiezingen omdat ze daarmee Israels beheer van de stad zouden erkennen. Nederlandse media hadden hier de afgelopen dagen reportages over, voornamelijk vanuit Arabisch perspectief. In Trouw werd bijvoorbeeld beweerd : 

"Het Palestijnse deel van Jeruzalem wordt al decennialang vrijwel genegeerd door het stadsbestuur. De inwoners betalen, evenals hun Joodse stadsgenoten, belasting, maar zien er weinig voor terug. Vuilnis wordt niet of maar mondjesmaat opgehaald, wegen worden niet geasfalteerd, er zijn geen parken, te weinig schoollokalen. Het meeste geld gaat naar de Joodse wijken."

Dit is wel erg kort door de bocht al klopt het dat er veel minder aan de Arabische wijken wordt uitgegeven. Dat burgemeester Barkat, die overigens is herkozen, de afgelopen jaren miljoenen in de Arabische wijken heeft geinvesteerd, ondanks het feit dat daar voor hem absoluut geen stemmen zijn te halen, vermeldde Trouw niet. 

 

RP

-----------

 

Today, the PLO screwed its people yet again

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.nl/2013/10/today-plo-screwed-its-people-yet-again.html

 

This Jodi Rudoren article in the New York Times is far from perfect, but it echoes things I wrote recently:

 

Mayor Nir Barkat proudly trumpets the investments he has made over the past five years in the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem: about $141 million for roads and infrastructure, $113 million to build 500 classrooms, more than $1 million for a single soccer field in Beit Safafa.

Mr. Barkat, a high-tech multimillionaire who is favored in Tuesday’s municipal elections here, did not, however, highlight these accomplishments in the actual Arab neighborhoods they benefit — because he, like his challenger, did not campaign at all in those places.

“You don’t focus on the ones that tell you they don’t intend to vote,” Mr. Barkat said with a shrug last week.

....As part of a broader “anti-normalization” campaign, the Palestinian leadership has for decades warned residents against casting ballots. So a vast majority do not vote, despite the possibility that their large numbers could win a solid blocking minority on the 31-member City Council, if not a winning coalition with sympathetic Israelis.

“The whole thing is not really rational,” said Sari Nusseibeh, president of Al Quds University, whose family has 1,300-year roots in Jerusalem. “It’s not by reason that people are guided; it’s by sentiments and feelings and fears and histories.”

Mr. Nusseibeh once advocated Palestinian voting, backing an Arab newspaper publisher who ran for mayor in 1987 but withdrew after his cars were burned and his home vandalized. Yet Mr. Nusseibeh himself has never voted here, either. And he said that the current Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, with the fate of Jerusalem among the contentious questions on the agenda, make people even more wary that voting could be seen as legitimizing Israel’s control of the city.

 

As I noted, at the same time the PLO threatens those who vote, it also complains that Jerusalem Arabs are disenfranchised.

In other words, the PLO is looking to score propaganda points far more than it cares about the welfare of its citizens.

According to early numbers, only about 1% of the Arab residents of Jerusalem across the Green Line voted.

And guess who is celebrating? The Palestinian Authority!

According to Al Watan (Saudi Arabia,) the low turnout was welcomed by the PA, calling it a "referendum."

If doing nothing except for complaining when things don't go your way is a referendum, then the PA has the market cornered.