JERUSALEM, 11 January 2006 — Acting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday that Israel would make a final decision Sunday on whether to allow East Jerusalem residents to vote in the Jan. 25 Palestinian election. “The interim prime minister said (in a phone conversation with Rice) that he will put the question of the participation of East Jerusalem before the Cabinet on Sunday,” said a statement from the prime minister’s office.
Israel had initially said it would ban Palestinians from voting in East Jerusalem because of the participation of Islamist movement Hamas, but has since softened its stance. Olmert told Rice that “it is clear that the representatives of the terror organizations cannot participate in the elections in East Jerusalem” in reference to Hamas.
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said on Monday that Israel had already agreed “in principle” to allow voting to take place in east Jerusalem which it occupied and then annexed in 1967. His comments provoked a furious reaction from the extreme right-wing Likud party, which has four ministers sitting in the Cabinet, with a spokesman calling the prospect of elections in East Jerusalem “miserable.”
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Monday that he had received assurances from the United States that East Jerusalem would be able to take part in the vote and rescinded a threat to cancel the whole election. However the Palestinians, who have received clearance to campaign in East Jerusalem, say that they have yet to be notified by Israel about its position.
Olmert told Rice that Israel was worried about the growing strength of Hamas, responsible for a majority of the anti-Israeli attacks of the past five years, and “the incapacity of Abu Mazen (Abbas) and the Palestinian Authority to deal with the situation.”
“Israel will not give the Palestinians any opportunity to postpone the election and to evade its commitments to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure,” he added. Mofaz yesterday said East Jerusalem Arabs would be permitted to cast ballots there, appearing to back away from Israel’s threat to block the voting because it objected to participation by candidates from the militant group Hamas.
An official in Mofaz’s office later said the defense minister was expressing his personal opinion rather than official government policy. Other officials also said no decision had been made despite US pressure for a deal.
Voting in East Jerusalem is contentious because Israel has annexed it to its capital in a move not recognized internationally. Palestinians want the city’s eastern sector as the capital of a future state. As outlined by Mofaz, Palestinians would be able to cast votes at five post offices in East Jerusalem, as in their last parliamentary election in 1996. A Defense Ministry official said the proposal would bar Hamas voting slips in the booths.
“These elections will take place in the format used in 1996 and the same applies for East Jerusalem,” Mofaz told reporters.
But in a sign of political disarray following Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s stroke, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said he knew of no agreement on East Jerusalem voting, and ministry spokesman Mark Regev said Mofaz was only describing a proposal.
