Comments on: Israel’s referendum law: Who gets asked?

By: » משאל של איזה עם? המשתה – אייל גרוס

» משאל של איזה עם? המשתה – אייל גרוס — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 18:22:29 +0000

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By: Aeyal Gross

Aeyal Gross — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 23:46:16 +0000

Re East Jerusalem – agreed that it would have been all of Jersualem that is corpus seperatum. But since only East Jerusalem is considered occupied territory (indeed I never understood why other countries would not recgnize West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, but recall that some emabssies were indeed still there until the Israeli Basic Law on Jerusalem) – the status of the two parts are now different. Having said that I think there is no clear cut answer about whether East Jeruslaem Palestinians can should be able to decide their own future regardless of the Palestinian population as a whole.

As to Cyprus – it’s kind of a different situation to some extent because of this is a peace agreement being brought to approval by all sides, unlike the Israeli bill. Having said that indeed the growing legitmacy granted to Turkish settlers is problematic, in the sense that it upsets the prohibitions in international law on settlements, and I may actually write a seperate post on this soon (in another context of land rights).

Having said that, again – my post was about how the basic idea should be that the population living in the occupied/non-self-governing territory should be the relevant people to be asked in referendum, not the occupier. How exactly to conduct referendum in such territories, and as noted above what are the personal and territorial boundaries is indeed a complex question. I am willing to agree that perhaps not in all the cases which have some parallels the best solutions were taken, but as the Western Sahara case shows, it is not at all clear that participants of settlers can gain legitmacy, and when it comes to East Timor as I already mentioned, also ones living outside East Timor participated, so even if local settlers particpated, and if we were to make a comparsion to the West Bank (again I am depating from E. Jerusalem to broader context) – I wonder if the Palestinians would have agreed to settlers participating as part of a deal that Palestinian refugees also can participate (and then we’d have to check whether we are talking only 1967 refugees or…).
By the way since this is not election the notion of “distorting” may be relevant here: it could be that settlers would be allowed to vote if you would assume the occupying power did not make significant demographic changes to the territory and thus their particpation is negligent.

In short, the road of self-determination is fraught with contradictions, unanswered questions and even what may seem as dead-ends. I do not seek at all to deny that. THe basic question remains whether at the heart of our decision is letting the ones under the foregin control decide, or let the ones controlling them?
In my humble opinion distoring the referendumg by allowing the occupiers to decide through settlers, is problematic, even if in a different way than allowing the occupiers to vote by themselves.

The question of which settlments projects get legitimacy that in way that we may want the settlers to be part of the self-determination decision is indeed very complex. I think in long term realities perhaps the existence of equal rights, may confer some stability and legitimacy that changes the pictures that stablizies over time. I think this is far from being the story of the West Bank and/or East Jerusalem. And doubt very much that it is the story of the Golan Heights.

By: Y.

Y. — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 22:15:46 +0000

First, I don’t think “distortion” should play a role here. “You get to vote, as long as you can’t affect the result” being clearly against the entire idea of voting. Here, another precedent is northern Cyprus, where many (most?) of the voters on the Annan Plan referendum were settlers (Wikipedia says that only 38% of the voters were Turkish-Cypriots, the rest being settlers. Granted, it’s not the best source. I should look up a more direct quote).

As for Jerusalem, your position seems odd. It is weird to ask whether “residents of East Jerusalem can vote on East Jerusalem’s future without regard to the view of the Palestinian population as a whole”. The Israeli population and residents of W. Jerusalem specifically have no links there, I guess?

Now, if you think of a “corpus seperatum” it would be difficult not to do this for entire Jerusalem if at all. The original partition resolution kept Jerusalem as a separate entity (I recall the residents were to vote in a referendum to which state they belonged a decade afterwards?), and successive UNSC resolutions on Jerusalem did not mention E. Jerusalem separately, but rather the entire city as a unit (see 478 and 476 for example).

Furthermore, the intl. community has tried very hard to avoid any recognition of even W. Jerusalem as Israel’s capital (this is difficult to chalk to the “occupation” as this behaviour predates 1967). So if there’s any difficulty here regarding views of others, it must center on a referendum which does not include W. Jerusalemites…

By: Aeyal Gross

Aeyal Gross — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 21:13:51 +0000

Re the comments above I just want to note that clearly this short post did not exhuast all the complex issues of geographical and personal boundaries of a referendum. Western Sahara is also a case in point, concerning who should be allowed to vote, with objection from Polisario to allowing people not registered in the area by a certain date to participate. So it’s not clear or accepted that settlers are part of such a vote… My point was that it is not the citizens and residents of the occupying/controling state which get to vote – but rather the ones living in the occupied/non-self-governing/disputed territory. From my perspective settlers who settled in the occupied territory during the period of its occupation contrary to international law should not be allowed to vote in such a referendum, as long as they live there as illegal settlers, even if the country in question annexed the territory. If we were to expand the discussion to West Bank (in relation to referendum in Israel has been proposed before – even if in this law does not apply to it) – than certainly you cannot allow the settlers who live there based on dispossesion of the local population and inequalities to be part of a referendum which be of the local population: this would amount to success of the settlment expansion and annexation policies which international law set to prohibit.
I do think significant distinctions can be drawn from the participants of Protestants in Ulster etc – because of the specific history of this territory, even if comparsions can be made. And for sure allowing Jewish settlers to participate would be very very different from allowing the English speakers to participate in the Quebec referendum, as we are not talking of occupied or non-self-governing territory. East Timor would be the closest example perhaps, but recall on the other hand that in that case East Timorese living outside the province were also allowed to vote. I am not sure what was the number of settlers and if was a number that could influence the result and what was their status. Will have to check, but as the results clearly shown there was not a significan number of settlers who could “distort” the result.
In any case clearly the question of who gets to vote and qualifies as a resident of the territory for this purpose can become complicated – it’s not an issue I addressed here. Regarding East Jerusalem, the question arises whether the residents of East Jerusalem can vote on East Jerusalem’s future without regard to the view of the Palestinian population as a whole. If we would assume that they could (and Jerusalem was even legally recognized as “corpus seperatum”), then if the majority of the occupied Palestinian population of East Jerusalem would so chose, they should have the right to unite with Israel, and I am not “worried” from such a result per se as.

By: Y.

Y. — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 20:05:05 +0000

P.S. the question of who gets to vote is a bit more complicated than Prof. Gross’s presentation. The entire Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is deadlocked over this, and the intl. community has ignored multiple referenda approving secession from Azerbaijan.

By: Y.

Y. — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 19:24:25 +0000

Prof. Gross should be careful what he wishes for. After all, he is recommending a move which would make the referendum far harder to pass – all these referendums included “settlers”.

There’s a narrow Jewish majority in the Golan Heights, and they are increasing much much faster than the Druze and others. There’s a Jewish majority in Jerusalem (and vote returns show a strong right-wing tilt). There are strong reasons to doubt even whether E. Jerusalem Arabs alone would vote in favor (I recall no direct polls in E. Jerusalem, but polls in the Triangle show a 90% majority against moving to the PA).

+972 should be grateful the referendums allow Israeli Arabs and Jews from the center to vote – the current referendum law de facto only requires about a third of the Jews to vote “aye”. That even this is regarded as impossible is a testament for how far off to the Left these proposals are.