Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said Monday that he was opposed to allowing East Jerusalem Arabs to participate in the proposed elections in the administered territories.
Addressing the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Shamir also said that Israel would prevent the elected Palestinian representatives from “dealing with any issue outside the agreed scope of negotiations, such as an independent Palestinian state.”
Shamir explained that the elected representatives would only be authorized to negotiate an interim autonomy plan for Palestinian self-rule in the territories.
The prime minister thereby distanced himself on these two key points from Vice Premier Shimon Peres. The Labor Party leader has spoken in favor of allowing East Jerusalem residents to vote and has said that the elected representatives should not be limited to negotiating an interim arrangement.
But Peres told journalists Sunday that he would allow such participation only on the condition that East Jerusalem Arabs exercise their right to vote outside the city.
Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek also said Sunday that he would favor allowing East Jerusalemites to vote in the referendum.
East Jerusalem was unilaterally annexed by the Knesset shortly after the Six-Day War in 1967 and therefore is part of Israel under Israeli law, unlike the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Arab residents can vote in municipal elections, though most boycotted them in February.
The issue of the eligibility of East Jerusalem Arabs to vote in the special referendum and the terms of reference of the elective body are likely to be major hurdles as Israel, the United States and the Palestinians prepare their positions on the election scenario in the weeks ahead.
‘SEIZE THIS OPPORTUNITY’
Several Likud ministers and politicians farther to the right have come out strongly against Israel allowing East Jerusalem Arabs to vote. They believe this would compromise Israel’s sovereignty over the city.
Peres was taciturn during the Sunday Cabinet meeting, but told reporters later that he supported political elections in the territories as “a referendum to represent a point of view, not administer affairs.”
Some Likud ministers and National Religious Party leader Avner Shaki urged Shamir at Sunday’s Cabinet meeting to proclaim the elections as municipal, not political.
Peres said he could accept an international presence during the elections, but not international “control or supervision.”
Asked whether the Palestinians will back the election plan, the Labor leader said that the Palestine Liberation Organization “can say yes, no or something in the middle. In my assessment, if it says something in the middle, the residents of the territories will participate in the elections.
“If I were a resident of the territories, I would seize this opportunity,” he said.
Likud and Labor will now separately prepare detailed positions on the election proposal before a special Cabinet committee convened by the prime minister begins work on drafting an official document outlining the scenario.
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