It's true. And the people most invested in keeping it that way are the Palestinian leaders.
Recent stories about Arab participation in the political process in Jerusalem shows that it isn't the Jews who want Jerusalem Arabs to be second class citizens - but Palestinian and Muslim leaders themselves.
JNS reports:
Inspired by Mansour Abbas, the first member of an independent Arab party to join a governing Israeli coalition, Fatah activists in eastern Jerusalem are throwing their support behind the candidacy of Walid Abu Tiya in the city’s municipal election.Originally from Nazareth, Abu Tiya, 62, is a lawyer and former Finance Ministry official who has lived in Jerusalem’s southeastern Beit Safafa neighborhood for 44 years.Jerusalem’s Arab sector has historically boycotted the city’s municipal elections, and no Arab party or individual has ever received enough votes to secure one of the city council’s 31 seats. Historically, Arab participation in local elections has been around 5%.“…It is becoming clear that the boycott of the elections for the Jerusalem Municipality is a mistake,” said Samer Singilawi, a Fatah activist and chairman of the East Jerusalem Development Fund.“An Arab list has the power to scoop up 10 mandates and bring about a significant change in the situation in Jerusalem,” said Singilawi. “This is the only way we can get budgets that will allow us to establish projects in the east of the city and improve housing and education for the residents,” he added.“But in order for us to succeed in making a real change, we need the political power of 10-13 candidates and seats in the city council,” he said.
Abu Tiya is no Zionist. He is Fatah. He wrote an op-ed in Arabic media saying that using Israeli democracy is the only way to force Israel to withdraw from east Jerusalem.
But reactions to his proposed candidacy show who cares about Arab rights in Jerusalem and who opposes them. Palestinian reaction to Abu Tayeb has been to form committees to enforce the Arab boycott of Jerusalem elections:
A group named The National Popular Conference of Jerusalem issued a new call for boycotting elections in the city. The group, dominated by members of the Palestinian ruling faction headed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, warned that a vote by Arab residents in the upcoming elections would be considered a “clear breach of the national consensus.”Similar calls were issued by a number of Palestinian factions and officials in the past few weeks.The group described the Jerusalem Municipality as “the primary arm of the occupation to carry out settler and Judaization projects in the city” and imposing severe restrictions on the Arab residents to force them to leave.”The group described the calls [to end the boycott] as “suspicious” and said they aim to show that Israel is a democracy. It warned that anyone who complies with these calls would be acting against the official Palestinian policy that considers Jerusalem as “the eternal capital of the future Palestinian state.”
Today, the Palestinian Supreme Fatwa Council reiterated that it is forbidden to vote in Jerusalem municipal elections or to run as candidates, claiming this is "a clear and explicit violation of Sharia and the national consensus" - because "the municipality is the first arm of the occupation authorities in implementing settlement and Judaization projects in city, restricting the means of living and housing for citizens."
See the logic? If Arabs vote, that shows Israel is a democracy; if Arabs have influence in the municipal government, then their services would improve, and then the anti-Israel crowd would lose one of its rhetorical points about how Israel is an apartheid state.
The Jerusalem Post, which no one can accuse of being anti-Zionist, wrote an editorial supporting Arab participation in Jerusalem elections, admitting that services for the Arab sector are worse than for the Jewish sections of the city and saying that the best way to improve the Arab standard of living in Jerusalem is by having the Arabs become part of the democratic process.
It is clear that the people who want apartheid against Jerusalem Arabs are Palestinian Arab leaders, and the ones who want Arabs to have equal rights are the Jews - along with a minority of Jerusalem Arabs whose lives are directly affected by boycott calls coming from Ramallah.
Of course, we do not see any calls from Amnesty or Human Rights Watch urging Jerusalem Arabs to vote and help improve their own lives. Those groups also profit from the "apartheid" slur and they, like the Palestinian Authority, want to ensure that their "evidence" for such slander remains intact.
They want to hurt Arab human rights in the name of human rights.
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