It is raining here — and in this dry region, rain is always viewed as a sign of good luck. This year, it is drier than ever, and water levels have reached critical lows.
Yet, by contrast, the Associated Press is reporting the rain as an excuse for what may well be a record low voter turn-out — rather than the widespread disillusionment and disdain for the choices that I have found among a number of Israeli voters.
The AP wrote: “Voters braved poor weather in Jerusalem and other parts of Israel Tuesday to cast their ballots in a general election … Pouring rain and strong winds Tuesday were expected to keep turnout low. Voter turnout in the last election in 2006 was 63.2 percent, the lowest in Israel’s history”.
One Israeli living in a kibbutz near Sderot, at the perimeter of Gaza — and whose daughter was killed a few years ago by a mortar attack from Gaza while she was visiting friends living even closer to Gaza — expressed total disillusionment with Israeli politicians, and said that he will probably not vote. Like many people I have interviewed who live within range of random fire from — but unlike many people living in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and other areas much further away — he expressed human sympathy with the people in Gaza, and said he was against killing so many innocent people there. (However, he said he saw no other way than military action — though one that would have been conducted differently, he said — to stop the firing from Gaza against Israel.) “What we want is only to live in peace, so do the Palestinians”, he said, “but the problem is the government. My daughter was killed…I was on the left, on the democratic left, now, I don’t want to use any political position. I don’t want to define himself. In this vote, all the candidates are the same — many think like me — and they used the war (against Gaza) for the elections. They used the war to promote themselves”.
One Israeli friend in Tel Aviv (who is proud to say he is a Jew, though he jokingly refers to himself as an “extreme leftist” because he favors giving all the territory siezed in 1967 to the Palestinians) says that all the major party candidates are the same — and he views all of them as a disaster. He said he will not even vote for the left-leaning Meretz, which he denounced in coloful language as boring and complicated bureaucrats with ambitions. Instead, he said, will be voting either for one of the small green parties, or for the Communist Party, whose candidate is said to be a rather competent politician who garnered the votes of a majority of young people in the Tel Aviv municipal elections last November.
Another Israeli friend from the north (who is proud to be an Arab and a Palestininian), who is now living in East Jerusalem, says he will not vote at all this time, despite his traditional support for one of the Israeli Arab political parties. He says he does not want in any way to legitimize these elections by casting his vote. “I am not optimistic, and I expect the worst. I will not be surprised if the coming government — whether led by Netanyahu or anybody else, will further reduce the margin of choice and of freedom for Israeli Palestinians, and some of their ‘privileges’ as citizens of Israel.” Israel’s recent 22-day military operation in Gaza, which he called a second “Sabra and Shatila” (where Palestinians were massacred by Lebanese Phalangist troops under the eyes of invading Israeli forces after the evacuation of Yasser Arafat’s PLO in September 1982),is first and foremost in his friend’s mind, he said — as it is in the minds of most Israeli Arabs and Palestinians in Israel. “If the last military operation was against Gaza, I will not be surprised if, in a few years, the next one will be against Israeli Arabs. The Israeli body politic here is less and less toleratnt of criticism, and to the aspirations of its Arab citizens. And more and more voices are calling for either ethnic cleansing, or dening Israeli Arabs their rights as citizens”, he told me.
Just to try to clarify the complexities of the situation here: most Palestinians in East Jerusalem are permanent residents, but not citizens, of Israel. They can vote — though most do not — in the municipal elections only. Only full citizens can vote in the national elections, which decide the membership of the Knesset according to party lists. There are some few Israeli citizens living in East Jerusalem — many are the lawyers and doctors from the north of Israel; and a few (the number is unknown, but probably quite small) have opted for, and been granted, Israeli citizenship by choice. Otherwise, the bulk of the Arab or Palestinian voting pool in the Jerusalem area is in the south-western neighborhood of Beit Safafa, near Bethlehem, which was on the Israeli side of the “green line” where fighting stopped in 1948. Or in the town of Abu Ghosh, a bit north-west of Jerusalem, which chose not to participate in the 1948 fighting, and which became Israeli. Or, in the small remnants of Palestinian communities in Jaffa, or the larger remnants in Ramle and Lod, or in the northern coastal cities of Haifa and Acca, or in the Galilee. Israeli Arabs make up 20-25% of the country’s population, depending on how they are defined (i.e., including Druse or not, etc) …
Oh, and did I mention that the IDF has imposed a total closure of the West Bank from midnight Monday until Wednesday morning, due to the Israeli elections?