Ballots vs. bullets for Palestinians

By Farah Stockman

Friday, Sept. 26, 2014 | 2:01 a.m.

Last month, the conflict was still raging in Gaza when something unexpected happened: Palestinians began tweeting to protesters in Ferguson, Mo.

“The Palestinian people know what it means to be shot while unarmed because of your ethnicity,” read one tweet.

“Wash your eyes with milk” if they’re stinging from tear gas, advised another.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Marxist organization in Gaza, issued a statement calling Michael Brown, the unarmed black man shot in Ferguson by police, a “martyr.”

A flurry of news outlets published pieces about the psychic similarities between black Americans and Palestinians. Both suffer from negative stereotypes based on the actions of their most violent members. Both are minorities in a country they did not choose. And both are disproportionately at risk for suspicion, arrest and even death at the hands of authorities.

But perhaps the differences are far more interesting to examine. Black slaves ended up in America because they were brought here, against their will. Palestinians ended up on lands controlled by Israel because wars shifted borders beneath their feet.

These different histories produced different strategies to obtain equal rights. Black Americans have focused on achieving equal status inside America, through the ballot box. They fought, and even died, for the right to vote in places such as Selma, Ala., and Jackson, Miss. It has taken centuries, but their struggle for inclusion is paying off. Voting works, even when it comes to something as visceral as police brutality.

According to a 1998 study by sociologist David Jacobs, of Ohio State University, data from 170 American cities show that unjustified killings of black people by police declined after those cities elected black mayors.

That’s a lesson for Ferguson, where 67 percent of the population is black, but elected officials and police are still overwhelmingly white. Although blacks in Ferguson flocked to the polls to vote for Barack Obama, just 6 percent turned out for local elections, compared with 17 percent of whites. I’ll bet that changes in the next election, as blacks in Ferguson show their outrage at the ballot box.

But for Palestinians, the situation is more complex. About 1.6 million Palestinians have Israeli citizenship and the right to vote in Israel. But roughly 4.5 million who live in Gaza and the West Bank can’t vote in Israeli elections. And they aren’t even fighting for that right. That would be widely viewed as a betrayal of the dream of a separate Palestinian state. So, instead, Palestinians struggle against inclusion.

Nowhere is this more evident than Jerusalem, where 40 percent of residents are Palestinians who were offered residency status in 1967, after war brought their neighborhoods under Israeli control. They have the right to vote in municipal elections and to apply for citizenship, which would allow them to vote in national elections. If they voted as a bloc, they’d be a political force to be reckoned with. But they don’t. They boycott, on the grounds that voting signals acceptance of Israel’s claim on East Jerusalem, which Palestinians hope will become the capital of their future state. Just 1,000 Palestinians out of 150,000 voted in the past election.

As a result, Palestinians are unrepresented on the Jerusalem city council, while pro-settler and ultra-Orthodox parties hold great sway.

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat nonetheless pledges to serve Palestinian residents and says he encourages greater participation in the city’s political life.

“From my perspective, any Arab Jerusalemite that would like to go through the process of becoming a citizen, we will help them do that and embrace that,” he told the Boston Globe’s editorial board.

But even Palestinian citizens have a muted voice in Israel’s democracy. Although Arab Israelis make up nearly 25 percent of the population, they only make up 10 percent of the Knesset.

That’s partly because joining forces with Arabs is still the third rail in Israeli politics. No Arab party has ever been invited into the governing coalition. With their parties doomed to be in the opposition, Arab Israeli voter turnout has declined dramatically over the past 15 years.

But it is possible that one day, Palestinians will give up on their dream of a separate state and begin to struggle instead for equal rights and full citizenship inside Israel. If that day ever comes, it will be the greatest test of Israel’s Jewish democracy. As we learned from the U.S. civil rights movement, some people will surely view Palestinian ballots as more threatening than bullets.

Farah Stockman is a columnist for the Boston Globe.