Word: palestinians
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Many of East Jerusalem's 250,000 Arabs are entitled to vote, but few did. Most heeded warnings from Palestinian leaders in Ramallah who said that voting in municipal elections is tantamount to recognizing Israel's "illegal" claim on East Jerusalem. Militants tried to set fire to ballot boxes in one neighborhood, and throughout East Jerusalem, only 2% of Arabs, mainly city workers and their families, turned out to vote. "The election boycott was a success," crowed one activist, who supports Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement...
...secret nuclear reactor being built with North Korean assistance - a claim that was widely viewed through the prism of false U.S. claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and the Bush Administration's animus toward Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime over its support for Hizballah and Palestinian radical groups, as well as its failure to curb jihadist insurgents crossing into Iraq...
...being elected mayor of the Holy City. He is an outsider, joining an election fray that has polarized the city's black-hatted community of ultra-Orthodox haredim from the rest of its secular inhabitants. The outcome of this race will have repercussions for the Obama Administration's Israel-Palestinian peace plans, since the dilemma of Jerusalem - whether it will be shared with the Palestinians or remain the undivided Jewish capital - lies at the heart of any future accord. Gaydamak's rivals for the mayoralty are an ultra-Orthodox Jew and a right-wing software mogul. His only hope...
Gaydamak's craziest scheme may be relying on the Arab vote. Not only does he risk losing his Beitar supporters, but traditionally, Jerusalem's Arabs seldom vote. Over the decades, the Palestinian leadership has urged Arabs to boycott municipal elections, claiming that it would validate Israel's "illegal" claim to the city. But the city's Arabs lose everything by refusing to vote. Without anyone lobbying for them on the city council, Arabs receive just one-tenth of municipal services - they have fewer schools, clinics, playgrounds and road repair - despite paying taxes...
...Arab side of town, election day usually starts with a sickening ritual: the few brave voters who appear are beaten up by Palestinian militants. Word of the attacks then spreads swiftly around East Jerusalem, and other Arabs stay away. Beitar's fans may be right: the millions of shekels lavished on the Arab vote may be wasted, as they could be spent on new star players for Gaydamak's luckless team. Meanwhile, Jerusalem, the capital of three monotheistic faiths, could drift toward religious intolerance. As columnist Tom Segev writes glumly in the newspaper Haaretz, "All that is left...