The voter turnout rates tell the story. Israel held elections on Oct. 22 for all its cities and communities as well as for what Israel calls “united Jerusalem.” While the overall national voter turnout rate was 51%, the variation between Arab towns in Israel and Jerusalem were the largest. The largest Palestinian city in Israel, Nazareth, witnessed one of the highest percentages of participation, while east Jerusalem saw a near-total boycott.
Incumbent Nazareth Mayor Ramez Jariysi was re-elected with the thinnest of margins (a 500-vote difference), defeating his toughest challenger, Ali Salem. A third contender for the office of mayor, left-wing Knesset member Hanin Zoubi, was also unsuccessful. Participation was very high in Nazareth, topping 73% of qualified voters in the town where Jesus grew up.
Palestinians living in Israel have different views in their attitudes toward municipal elections versus Knesset parliamentary elections. Whereas some political purists refuse to participate in national elections because of their ideological opposition to Israel and its policies, almost all agree to participate in municipal elections because it is mostly local and service-oriented rather than political. Family and tribal issues and loyalties in addition to service-related topics often dominate local elections. Municipal elections in Israel often see a much higher voter turnout rate among Arab voters than Jewish Israelis. In the current elections, the average national participation rate was 51%, but the participation in Arab towns, according to the arabs48 website, averaged 75%. In Nazareth, participation was 73%, in Shafamer 72%, in Sakhnin 87%, in Kufr Kanaa 83%, in Majdel Krum 82% and in Arabet al-Batouf 84%.
In contrast with the hotly contested elections in Nazareth, Palestinians in east Jerusalem did not show up en masse at their polling stations. A response to the call for a Palestinian boycott of the elections to the “unified city” continued a 46-year tradition of boycotting the elections. Israel’s leading daily newspaper Yediot Ahranot reported on this low turnout, saying that less than 1% of the city’s Palestinian Arab population voted. Israelis re-elected Nir Barkat with 51% of the vote. He faced fierce competition from Moshe Leon, an ally of President Benjamin Netanyahu, who garnered 45% of the Jewish vote.
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