Israeli Arabs call for poll boycott

Israeli Arabs call for poll boycott
AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE

NAZARETH, FEB 4: Some 400 Israeli Arabs demonstrated in the northern Israeli city of Nazareth for a boycott of the February 6 special election for Prime Minister.

‘‘No to the murderers of our people, neither Sharon nor Barak,’’ protestors shouted, refering to the right-wing front runner Ariel Sharon and his Labour rival, caretaker Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

The protestors were holding photos of the 13 Israeli Arabs who were killed in October by the Israeli police during pro-Palestinian demonstrations. A similar demonstration last week drew a crowd of about 4,000.

Israeli Arabs accuse Barak, whom they helped bring topower in his 1999 landslide, of being responsible for the October bloodbath.

Support from the Israeli Arab community is crucial for Barak, who trails Sharon by at least 16 percentage points in all the latest opinion polls, but the campaign for a boycott has intensified in recent weeks. Arab Israeli’s account for around 13 percent of the electorate. With more than a million people, the Arab community represents 18.6 percent of Israel’s total population, and has been the victim of discrimination, as recognised by Israel’s supreme court in July last year.

Meanwhile, Barak is focusing on Israeli Arab, Left-wing and Russian voters in a last-ditch effort to try to narrow a huge gap in opinion polls of 17 to 21 percentage points. But there was more bad news for him on Sunday when Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper published the cumulative results of an unorthodox opinion survey.This technique showed Sharon crushing Barak by 58.67 percent 33.8 percent of votes cast by 7,675 people, of whom 7.53 percent put in a blank ballot, rejecting both candidates. Barak won in only four of 32 districts, taking the Port city of Haifa by 60.8 % to Sharon’s 37 percent.

The decision by the Torah Sages Council of the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism political faction to call on its communityabout seven percent of the electorateto back Sharon came as no surprise.