Occupied East Jerusalem – Munir Nuseibeh has the right to vote in the upcoming Jerusalem municipal elections, but he refuses to do so. The 42-year-old Palestinian does not want to legitimize the occupation and annexation of the east of the city by Israel.
“This election will not free us. This will – at best – give the Palestinians (in East Jerusalem) some additional services,” Nuseibeh, a legal expert, told Tel Aviv Tribune.
“But why should we integrate ourselves into an apartheid machine, instead of working on the real goal of dismantling the apartheid regime?
Since Israel conquered East Jerusalem and other Arab lands in the 1967 war, the city’s Palestinians have collectively boycotted those elections for the same reasons as Nuseibeh.
There are approximately 362,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem, most of whom have resident status but are stateless. This means they can participate in local elections – such as the municipal vote in Israeli cities on February 27 – but not in national elections.
Despite acute racial discrimination, some Palestinians argue that their people should support a single Palestinian candidate – or a single list – in an effort to gain meaningful representation in the Jerusalem municipality. This way they can push for better arrangements and for Palestinian rights.
But their advocacy sparked debate over whether participation in municipal elections would promote those goals or whitewash Israel’s systematic discrimination against Palestinians.
“Those who are running in these elections are selling us dreams,” Nuseibeh said. “Let’s imagine we all voted for one candidate in these elections. The next morning, the Israeli government and the Knesset will change the boundaries of Jerusalem. »
Controversial step
In May 2023, Sondos al-Hoot made the bold decision to campaign for one of Jerusalem’s 31 local city council seats. She joined a list that includes left-wing Palestinian and Jewish candidates.
Sitting in a cafe drinking a latte, she told Tel Aviv Tribune that most Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem do not support her. However, she is still motivated to run since Jerusalem’s $3.8 billion municipal budget goes almost entirely to the city’s Jewish residents.
“I see this kind of oppression and I can’t stay silent,” said al-Hoot, 33.
Al-Hoot added that his main goal is to improve water pipes, roads and waste collection in East Jerusalem. She would also like to improve the education of Palestinian children and fight against violence against women.
His biggest fear is that the team behind Jerusalem’s far-right deputy mayor, Arieh King, will win most of the municipality’s seats unless he is challenged.
For years, King attempted to increase the Jewish population in East Jerusalem and expel the Palestinians. This led the Jerusalem municipality to accelerate the destruction of Palestinian neighborhoods and homes.
The municipality says most houses are demolished because they were built illegally. But local and international rights groups say authorities are making it nearly impossible for Palestinians to obtain building permits.
In 2023, a total of 140 Palestinian homes were demolished in East Jerusalem, an increase of 60% from the previous year.
Ahmad Muna, a Palestinian bookseller from East Jerusalem, believes King is not the problem. He said Israeli institutions – including the municipality – are designed to discriminate against Palestinians.
“Even Palestinians in the Knesset cannot prevent the demolition of homes in Israel or stop the government from financing and building new Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories,” he said.
“This is why I will not vote in the municipal elections and it does not matter whether I vote or not. Israeli laws discriminate against Palestinians,” he told Tel Aviv Tribune.
Disillusioned
In 1993, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo Accords with Yitzhak Rabin, then Israeli Prime Minister. The agreements launched a peace process with the aim of creating a separate Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza – land that Israel conquered and still occupies since the 1967 war.
While Palestinian leaders envisioned East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state, many Palestinians became disillusioned with the peace process due to Israel’s expansion of Jewish settlements and separation of Gaza – geographically, economically and politically – from the West Bank. Meanwhile, illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank have mushroomed, often enveloping Palestinian neighborhoods, cutting them off from each other and even calling into question the viability of a future Palestinian state.
Walid Tayeh, a 69-year-old Palestinian lawyer from Nazareth and resident of Jerusalem, came to believe that a one-state solution might be better for the Palestinians.
This is what inspired him to campaign for the municipal elections last year.
“I wanted to take the municipal elections as an example. I thought that if Jews and Palestinians could live together in one city, then there would be no reason why we could not live together in one democratic state, from the river to the sea,” he said at Tel Aviv Tribune.
But Israel’s response to Hamas’ deadly attack on Israel on October 7, in which 1,139 people were killed and 240 kidnapped, changed Tayeh’s view.
During the first two weeks of Israel’s war on Gaza, Israel forcibly uprooted approximately one million Palestinians from the north of the enclave to the south. The Israeli army then razed entire neighborhoods and made northern Gaza uninhabitable, according to human rights groups and the United Nations. Nearly 30,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s war on Gaza.
“I am now convinced that the Israeli Jewish state wants to ethnically cleanse us,” he told Tel Aviv Tribune. “They want the whole land just for themselves.”
Boycott expected
Tayeh was not the only one horrified by Israel’s reaction to October 7. Palestinians in East Jerusalem have stopped talking about whether they should participate in or boycott municipal elections. Every conversation in homes, cafes and barbershops was about the suffering of the people of Gaza.
“The State of Israel has raised its level of brutality and aggression against the Palestinians. This does not invite (those in East Jerusalem) to vote in the elections,” said Muna, the bookseller.
Al-Hoot said she stopped campaigning for weeks after the October 7 Hamas attacks. She told Tel Aviv Tribune she could not dare run as a candidate in Israeli elections at a time when hundreds of Palestinians were dying every day in an enclave just 76km from East Jerusalem.
She then decided to resume her campaign after seeing the far right use the war to rally voters against the Palestinians in Jerusalem.
“Before the war, there was a lot of Jewish racism against Arabs, but it was implicit. When the war broke out, the mask fell and racism became even more explicit. They would say they will deport all the Arabs to Jordan and all the Arabs are with Hamas,” she told Tel Aviv Tribune.
Despite al-Hoot’s aspirations, many Palestinians believe that most of East Jerusalem will boycott municipal elections again. This time, they fear legitimizing Israel’s mass killings in Gaza – which could amount to genocide – as well as its annexation of East Jerusalem and its apartheid in the West Bank.
“All of Palestine, including Jerusalem, is under apartheid,” said Nuseibeh, the legal expert.
“Palestinians must resist – even if we resist silently – by not participating in municipal elections. »
