Comment by squibonpig
13 hours ago
The person you're responding to said they were unable to vote in Israeli elections. You said "no, they're able to, uhh, not vote in the case of those under Hamas and they're able to vote in elections held by the Palestinian authority in the case of those in the west bank." I don't know a ton about this, but I don't believe the Palestinian authority elections are the same as the Israeli elections. As I understand it, the right to vote is gated behind a citizenship process that is restrictive enough to generally prevent Palestinians from obtaining it.
> The person you're responding to said they were unable to vote in Israeli elections.
They said Palestinians are "a large portion of the Israeli population [that] is disenfranchised". That is a wrong statement. Palestinians are not part of the Israeli population and there is no expectation (on either side) that they would participate in Israeli elections. That issue has been largely settled by the Oslo framework in 1994.
> As I understand it, the right to vote is gated behind a citizenship process that is restrictive enough to generally prevent Palestinians from obtaining it.
I'm not sure which elections you mean.
- Israeli elections are for Israeli citizens. The 20% of Israelis who are Arab (sometimes loosely referred to as "Palestinians" as a loose synonym for "Arab living in former mandatory Palestine") can participate normally
- Palestinians in the West Bank vote in Palestinian elections. ' not aware of any citizenship-related restrictions there. Possible issues might be: logistics of getting to polls because of Israeli checkpoints; or simply the absence of elections (PA hasn't held a national election since 2006, although there are municipal elections).
- Specifically in East Jerusalem, on which Israeli claims sovereignty, Palestinians are classified as permanent residents of Israel. They may apply fot Israeli citizenship but that's probably a difficult process. As permanent residents they can vote in Israeli municipal elections, and as Palestinians they can vote in Palestinian national elections. But not being Israeli citizens they cannot vote in Israeli national elections. Perhaps that is what you're referring to?
> That issue has been largely settled by the Oslo framework in 1994.
A process that's alive and well, just like Yitzhak Rabin.
The peace process that Oslo initiated is certainly dead. But Oslo itself, as the last bilateral agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, is de facto the law of the land, even though it was meant as an interim agreement. For better or worse...
This is like saying Australians are disenfranchised because they can't vote in New Zealand elections. They're not governed by Israel in any meaningful way.
It would be like if Native American tribes could not vote in American elections, but the federal government still controlled the ability for those nations to access the external world.
Correction: It is like saying Australians can't vote in general elections after being pushed out of 75% of the territory, except a small percentage who are tolerated in the major land since they won't make a difference.
The ostracized Aussies then can vote for their own leaders but will be blamed if they vote for the wrong ones and embargoed, regularly shot and even bombed from time to time to remind them who the place belongs to.