{"id":2828,"date":"2013-01-23T07:38:49","date_gmt":"2013-01-23T05:38:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.luxorbis.org\/friedensplattform.at\/?p=2828"},"modified":"2013-01-23T07:38:49","modified_gmt":"2013-01-23T05:38:49","slug":"2000-israelis-volunteer-to-vote-for-palestinians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.friedensplattform.at\/?p=2828","title":{"rendered":"2,000 Israelis volunteer to vote for Palestinians"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Israelis, who cast ballots according to their partner’s preferen<\/span>New ini<\/span>tiative pairs up Palestinians and ce.
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By\u00a0Ilene Prusher <\/span><\/a><\/span>|\u00a0Jan.22, 2013 | 5:01 PM <\/span>|\u00a0\"\" 13 Haaretz
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Shimri Zameret’s protest ballot on behalf of a man named Omar from Hebron on Tuesday, Jan. 22.<\/span> Photo by Shimri Zameret<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Ofer Neiman planned to cast a ballot in Jerusalem on Tuesday, but not for a party of his choosing. Rather, he decided to \u201cgive up\u201d his ballot, as he put it, for an East Jerusalem Palestinian \u2013 a man who doesn\u2019t have the right to vote in elections for the government under whose laws he lives, and which has the power to determine his fate.<\/p>\n

That man is Bassam Aramin, who, like Neiman, is a peace activist. The two are part of a new initiative called Real Democracy, inspired by a similar movement that sprang up in the UK in 2010. There, supporters were asked to donate as it were their votes to people in countries such as Afghanistan and Bangladesh. In just ten days, the group says, about 2,000 Israelis have volunteered to give up their votes by being paired up with Palestinians in Jerusalem, the West Bank or Gaza.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always supported Meretz and Hadash,\u201d Neiman explains. \u201cBut I came to the conclusion that specific parties by themselves will not bring about any change from the left, and it’s more important to emphasize in various ways that these elections are not actually democratic. For me, it\u2019s part of an ongoing worldwide movement to let people know there\u2019s no democracy here, so instead of these false hopes by voting for left-wing parties, I\u2019m voting on someone else\u2019s behalf.\u201d<\/p>\n

Critics might say that there is a flawed logic here. Palestinians have voted in elections; Aramin himself voted for the Palestinian Legislative Council in 1996 and in 2006. The latter wasn\u2019t easy, because the Israeli government and the Jerusalem municipality didn\u2019t want Palestinian Authority voting booths dotting the officially united capital, even though the right of East Jerusalemites to cast ballots was stipulated in the Oslo Accords. And with Hamas emerging as the victor, it was an election many pro-peace Palestinians and Israelis would just as soon forget.<\/p>\n

But those elections don\u2019t mean much under the circumstances, Neiman posits. \u201cThe Palestinian elections are meaningless, because they\u2019re still under Israeli occupation and they have no sovereignty,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Aramin, whose 10-year-old daughter Abir was shot and killed in 2007 by a border policeman, is a co-founder of Combatants for Peace and is involved in the forum that brings bereaved Israeli and Palestinian families together. He knows that Real Democracy\u2019s campaign will be dismissed by many as a fringe phenomenon. But he hopes that it will make people think twice about accepting the status quo.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy hope is that a lot of Israelis will start to open their eyes and ask, \u2018why are these crazy Israelis giving their votes to the Palestinians, to the \u2018enemy,\u2019\u201d he quips. \u201cI hope that through this, more people will realize that what we\u2019ve been living with for almost 46 years is not a normal situation, and it is not democracy. Perhaps this campaign will open up some debate about it.\u201d He asked Neiman to vote Hadash, \u201cbecause it\u2019s the most serious Arab-Jewish party, and because I like Dov Khenin. He\u2019s always with us, fighting for real democracy and coexistence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shimri Zameret, one of the activists, discovered late Monday that a group of nine Palestinians from Bil\u2019in, a site of regular protests against the West Bank barrier, wanted to participate. Zameret put up a note on Real Democracy\u2019s Facebook page asking for Israelis to give up their vote for the nine, but was skeptical that they\u2019d have enough last-minute takers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 45 minutes, we had nine Israelis come forward. We were all shocked at how fast people signed up,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Sometimes the Palestinian \u201cmatch\u201d for the Israeli voter says his or her choice is to boycott the vote altogether. That\u2019s what happened for Zameret, who is voting on behalf of a man named Omar in Hebron.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a form of civil disobedience. Yes, people get angry at me and say, \u2018how do you change the system if you don\u2019t participate?\u2019 But I don\u2019t agree,“ says Zameret. „Sometimes boycotting is a better way of highlighting the lack of legitimacy of the system.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shelly Nativ, 40, who lives in Tel Aviv and works at Open University, was casting a vote for Wajih Burnat, a Palestinian in Bil\u2019in whom she knows from going to protests in his West Bank village. He decided to vote for Ahmed Tibi and Ra\u2019am-Ta\u2019al.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo have a few million people decide the fate of double the amount of people, that\u2019s not a democracy,\u201d she says. \u201cFor me things here have gone so wrong, I didn\u2019t feel comfortable to just go and vote, because I felt that the parties I might vote for couldn\u2019t address the severity of the current situation. So the campaign made sense to me \u2013 I can at least give my vote to someone else.\u201d<\/p>\n

She hesitates, and moves away from the polling place where she just voted, concerned she could be accused of campaigning too close to the ballot box. \u201cI hope it has some kind of impact,\u201d she adds, lowering her voice. \u201cThe positive impact will be if it will somehow diversify the public debate about our state of affairs. It has been very narrow so far.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Israelis, who cast ballots according to their partner’s preferenNew initiative pairs up Palestinians and ce.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-palaestina-solidaritaet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.friedensplattform.at\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.friedensplattform.at\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.friedensplattform.at\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.friedensplattform.at\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.friedensplattform.at\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.friedensplattform.at\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2828\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.friedensplattform.at\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.friedensplattform.at\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.friedensplattform.at\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}