Polling stations are made available throughout the territory the Israeli regime controls – in the Jewish settlement in Hebron and in Ramat Aviv, in Ari’el and in Nof HaGalil, in Haifa and in Jaffa. [...] Lesser political rights, if any: for Palestinians only, in the entire area Palestinian subjects living under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip cannot participate in elections Roughly 5.5 million Palestinian subjects live in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967: about 3.5 million in the West Bank (including roughly 350,000 in East Jerusalem) and some 2 2 million in the Gaza Strip. [...] Israel cites these changes to support its argument that residents of the Occupied Territories can influence their future through other political systems – the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip. [...] Israel works to uphold the perception that everyone in the West Bank has a political system in which they can participate: the settlers vote and run for Knesset and the Palestinians for the Palestinian Authority. [...] President Barak, for instance, explained that demanding equality does not threaten the existence of Israel as a Jewish state only so long as the aim is to “secure equality between citizens internally, while acknowledging the rights of the minority living among us.” If, on the other hand, the demand for equality “seeks to undermine the rationale for the country’s establishment, thereby denying Isra.
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- Israel