Palestinians debate poll boycott in Jerusalem

As voters in occupied Jerusalem go to the polls tomorrow for municipal elections, Palestinians are debating not which candidate to back — but whether to cast their ballots at all.

The vast majority of the disputed city’s roughly 300,000 Palestinians are expected to boycott the polls again, despite calls by a minority to use the elections to seize influence in a city under full Israeli regime control for decades.

Rami Nasrallah, director general of occupied Jerusalem East Jerusalem’s International Peace and Cooperation Centre think-tank, sees little to gain from voting.

“I’m not willing to recognise the political rules of the game and to recognise or legitimise the Israeli occupation,” he said.

Israel captured the city’s east and the surrounding West Bank in the 1967 Six Day War, later annexing East Jerusalem in a move never recognised by the international community.

Palestinians claim it as the capital of their future state.

Palestinian voter turnout was less than one per cent in the last local vote in 2013, according to the Palestinian Academic Society for International affairs.