Transparent ballot: No vote for Palestinians in West Bank
Op-ed by Sarit Michaeli, B'Tselem spokesperson, originally published in Ynetnews
The Palphot print shop in the West Bank settlement of Karnei Shomron was hard at work until last week – printing 230 million voter ballots for Israel’s upcoming general elections. A media photo showed one of the employees holding an uncut sheet of ballots, with the codes for all 26 parties running for Israel’s 20th Knesset proudly on display.
Since the print shop is located in a settlement and the majority of its employees are Palestinians, it is safe to assume that some of the workers who were busy printing ballots were residents of nearby towns and villages.
They may be from Jayyus, a village that lost a large part of its farmland to the invasive and greedy route of the Separation Barrier. While the route near the village has been changed recently, it still cuts off much fertile land from its Palestinian owners. Or maybe they’re from ‘Azzun, a town where some homes were built in Area C, without a permit from the Civil Administration, and are therefore facing the threat of demolition; a town where tens of thousands of residents are collectively punished by the military for stone-throwing by some local youths. Maybe they even come from Qalqiliya, a city that the barrier surrounds on three sides, stifling any possibility of construction and development. This has caused hundreds of businesses to shut down and an exodus of residents from the town.
Although the government of Israel and its various agencies in the Occupied Palestinian Territories directly affect almost every aspect of life for millions of Palestinians living in the West Bank, these residents will not be able to elect the next government: They are not Israeli citizens but subjects of a military regime living in occupied territory. Yet no one would dream of imposing any restriction, including the right to vote, on the Israeli settlers who live in the same occupied territory, outside their country’s sovereign borders.
remainder: http://www.btselem.org/20150313_transparent_ballot
