Vision to Reality: The Reut Blog

The potential for a Palestinian Arab to run for Jerusalem municipal elections echoes a warning made by Sari Nusseibeh and may constitute a trend towards a Palestinian inversion towards the two state solution.

The Jerusalem Post (16/9) reports on the decision by the mukhtar (village leader) of Sur Bahir, Zohair Hamdan to run for city council in the November 11 elections. It flies in the face of the traditional Arab boycott of the city elections. Palestinians do not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the city.

On the one hand, this could be a sign that Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem is recognized by its residents.

On the other hand, it could indicate that East Jerusalem Palestinians (as well as those in the West Bank) may want to unify with Israel under one authority – in other words, a move towards one state and running for mayor is one of the first moves towards this.

To quote Akiva Eldar’s interview with Sari Nusseibeh, ‘he [Nusseibeh] wouldn’t be surprised if one of the Palestinian residents of the city ran for mayor in the municipal elections in November. The candidate would not run as a representative of Jerusalem per se, Nusseibeh stressed. Rather he would be running on behalf of all the Palestinians in the occupied territories.

Is this yet another sign towards a Palestinian Inversion towards the Two State Solution?

(Newsweek have another article by Nusseibeh on the One State Solution).