Arab Non-Participation in Elections

"Secular Defeats Ultra-Orthodox in Jerusalem"
By Isabel Kershner
November 12, 2008
A14

Kershner has certainly gone too far in her use of the term “hawkish,” employing it twice in the first paragraph to describe mayoral candidates Barkat and Porush. First of all, referring to a mayor, who commands no armed forces, as hawkish is not appropriate, unless she is referring to his view of policing; even then, however, other terms are more descriptive.

She is, of course, referring to Barkat and Porush's shared position on a united Jerusalem and seeks to delegitimize it through this terminology. Uncompromising would be a better word choice.

Twice in the article, Kershner refers to the lack of east Jerusalem Arab participation in the election. She cites “the belief that participating would be tantamount to recognizing Israeli sovereignty” as the reason for their non-participation. In doing so, Kershner makes their decision - or non-decision - sound principled. In fact, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has told Arab Jerusalemites not to vote, and fear of PA reprisals now, or in the future - if Jerusalem is divided - is certainly a factor in the abysmally low Arab voter turnout.
In the present, reprisals against advocates of Jewish-Arab co-existence in a united Jerusalem, are equally threatening. Take the 2001 attack on Arab Jerusalemite Zohir Hamdan, who strangely doesn’t appear in this article though he ran for mayor this year, too. Moreover, in 1989, Hana Seniora, a Palestinian resident of Beit Haninah, dropped out of the mayoral race after the PLO mounted "massive pressure" on him.

The most problematic part of the article, however, occurs at the very end and must be quoted in full:

"Of the population of 740,000, the Palestinian third is made up mostly of Muslims who live in the east of the city — territory that Israel conquered, then annexed, as a result of the 1967 war. The Palestinians demand those areas as the capital of their future state."

This paragraph offers a paradigm for misleading writing. Kershner makes it seem like the Palestinians mentioned in the first sentence are the same ones mentioned in the last sentence. The PA may demand parts of Jerusalem as its capital, but the Palestinians of the first sentence, who are Jerusalem residents, have expressed mixed views about dividing the city.
Furthermore, Kershner is overly generous in stating that "Palestinians demand those areas as the capital of their future state." Hamas wants all of Jerusalem - and all of Israel - and many Palestinians support Hamas. By painting Palestinian opinion with such a broad stroke, Kershner leaves the reader with a smudged canvas.