- 3 آب 2016
- أقلام مقدسية
By: Walid Salem
The upcoming elections for the Palestinian local Councils date is already decided for the 8th of October 2016. Hamas already accepted holding it in Gaza, and Islamic Jihad is considering running for the first time ever. With this national unity about the upcoming municipal elections, it is time to bring back to the agenda the question about the inclusion of Jerusalem in these municipal elections.
For some bringing this question back will look like taking about the impossible. A lot will look with a surprise and say: come on?, what you are asking about?. What you are questioning for is almost impossible, so why to waste your and out time presenting such an idea?.
Those who say this have a point: The Israeli dominance over East Jerusalem is almost full, the East Jerusalem Palestinian communities are fully fragmented in addition to the fragmentations inside each one of them, the Palestinian Authority is as non present in the city, the Palestinian factions are very week, then one will question when they released the last statement about the city issues... Etc.. Etc. In the realm of realism these points are all right and many others can be added to them. The question still in other hand on the human being historically well known capacity to change realities and to create a new ones in their place?.
How then the upcoming municipal elections in Palestine be a starting point for Jerusalem?. The answer include political aspects of work, but also developmental community based and human security based components.
The easiest are the political component: That is an international campaign by the Palestinians as an authority and civil society organizations together to tell every body in the international community that the negotiations about Jerusalem were supposed to be finished in 1999, ever since we put ourselves in self restraint not to act unilaterally in the city for the last 17 years, while at the same time the Israeli Governments went on in their unilateral acts to Israelize the city. For us no more time then to wait. Now they reached a point of planing to exclude the Palestinian neighborhoods from the city and take the core of it to the side of Israel. Therefore this is our time to act in the city, but actually we are already acting late and we need your support in order to succeed . This is our political message. The second is the more difficult, and the PA has different options here, the first among them is to create an East Jerusalem Council from the elected symbols of the professional and labor trade unions, youth and women clubs and groups, civil society networks and other sectors and social groups representatives,and to get an international support and protection to it. This is the maximum option.
The second is the medium option by composing a Jerusalem Parliament that include all the elected representatives of the sectors and the social and the community groups in Jerusalem. The third and the minimum option will be by supporting the ongoing experiences going on in the 22 East Jerusalem communities of electing a community committee for each one of these, then a community Council to be composed of 22 representatives of these communities becoming by thus the PA address for the development of the East Jerusalem Communities. The idea has three dimensions: One of them is about recreating the already lost link between East Jerusalem and the rest of West Bank and Gaza. The second by bringing the PA back to take its responsibilities towards this part of its people that live in Jerusalem., and thirdly provide East Jerusalem Palestinians with municipal representation like all the other Palestinians in the other cities and villages of West Bank and Gaza.
