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Golan residents renounce Israeli plan to hold local elections

Israel is proposing to hold elections in the Golan Heights for the first time in its 50-year occupation, but since almost none of the locals are eligible to run for office, they want nothing to do with the idea.
Members of the Druze community look at their friends and relatives (R) on the Syrian side of the border, during a rally in the Druze village of Majdal Shams on the Golan Heights, which stands at the heart of a long-standing conflict between Israel and Syria, February 14, 2014. Hundreds of members of the Druze community took part in the rally on Friday, marking the 33rd anniversary of Israel's annexation of the strategic plateau which it captured in the 1967 Middle East War. REUTERS/Baz Ratner (POLITICS ANNI
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RAMALLAH, West Bank — The people of the occupied Syrian Golan Heights have rejected the Israeli government’s decision to hold local elections next year in four Golan villages: Majdal Shams, Bukata, Masada and Ein Qinya. To allow such elections, they said, would be to recognize the occupation.

Israeli Interior Minister Aryeh Deri notified local Golan authorities July 6 of the decision to hold elections on Oct. 30, 2018. The elections would be the first under Israeli law since the Golan Heights was occupied in 1967. Israel has been accustomed to appointing local council heads and members in the Golan Heights, where nearly 23,000 people live. To many of those residents, there's a big symbolic difference between appointed and elected leaders.

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