[with the Israeli elections taking place tomorrow, November 1, we are republishing this circular from the Executive Director of B’Tselem]
With Israelis gearing up for our fifth general elections in under four years this coming Tuesday, many are worried about the frequency with which we are heading to the ballot boxes.
However, the actual meaning of voting here seems to be the subject of a broad consensus: that elections in Israel are a celebration of democracy,and that they offer all the people who live here an equal opportunity to freely participate in the political process, impact who gets a seat in parliament and in government (if a coalition emerges at all), and determine the policies that shape our lives – at least until the next elections.
Yet is that really so?
In January 2021, B’Tselem published a position paper analysing how the entire area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is ruled by a single regime centred on one goal: advancing and cementing Jewish supremacy through laws, practices, and organized violence. The paper detailed key features that render this an apartheid regime. Ahead of the upcoming elections, we are issuing a new position paper focusing on one of these aspects: the right to political participation, and the way in which the regime organizes or denies this from different parts of the population under its control.
About half the people who live in this entire area are Jewish-Israeli, and the other half Palestinians. The regime overrides the demographic parity by fragmenting the Palestinians into subgroups, subjecting each to a different degree of oppression. This enables it to cement the Jewish-Israeli monopoly on political power, while reaping the benefits of the democratic image that general elections uphold.
No democracy to celebrate
Below are the key points of the paper, published today as an insert in the Haaretz Hebrew edition:
Jewish-Israelis can exercise their political rights in full, wherever they live, be it in Tel Aviv or in a West Bank settlement, and legally vote close to home. For Palestinians, the opposite is true. Nowhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea can they fully exercise their political rights. Millions of people in Gaza and the West Bank are stripped of their rights and treated as mere subjects, excluded by the political system that runs their lives. Israel upholds the pretence that they have independent political systems – the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza. Yet this propaganda is a far cry from reality, obscuring the fact that the Israeli regime controls the lives of all Palestinians in the entire area.
Palestinian citizens of Israel can vote and run for office, but their representation is limited and never equal to that of Jews.The Military Rule, which was imposed on Palestinian citizens of Israel until 1966 and restricted their political activity, set the tone for today’s widespread view that Knesset resolutions are legitimate only if they secure a “Jewish majority.” Palestinian political representation is also circumscribed by law. Section 7a of Basic Law: The Knesset is regularly invoked to try and disqualify Palestinian candidates and lists running for parliament, on the grounds that their struggle for full equality negates Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. In Israel’s Jewish democracy, fighting with democratic means for the most basic of democratic tenets – equality – is prohibited.
I hope that reading the full position paper will give pause for reflection over the meaning of elections in Israel, past, present and future. One thing is certain: this is no democracy to celebrate.
From a circular e-mail from the Executive Director of B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organisation. Picture top from B’Tselem website
