Tuesday, March 30, 2021
Elder of Ziyon
On Monday, Palestinian foreign minister Riyad Al-Maliki called on the European Union to pressure Israel to enable Arabs in Jerusalem to vote in the planned upcoming elections, so they can assert sovereignty over Jerusalem.
We've seen this happen before.
In 2006, after being pressured by President Bush, Israel allowed Arabs in Jerusalem to vote in those elections by setting up absentee ballot boxes in post offices - Palestinians could pretend that the post offices were actual voting locations and Israel could say they were just post offices and the absentee ballots were collected and sent to West Bank voting locations.
There is no reason not to maintain the same system this year if elections are actually held, but the Palestinians know that the EU really wants to see elections and the PA can threaten that they won't occur unless Jerusalem is treated like the rest of the territories.
A Hamas spokesman said that he thought there was a 40% chance that the legislative elections will be delayed.
