Days of Palestine – Jerusalem

The Executive Director of the Central Elections Commission, Hisham Kahil, affirmed that there is a Palestinian agreement that residents of occupied Jerusalem should participate in the upcoming elections.

Kahil said that the Palestinian factions agreed in the second Cairo meeting on (16-17) this March that elections should be held in the holy city, as happened in the previous elections, and therefore all efforts are directed towards that.

He explained that the form of the participation of Jerusalemites will be the same as in the previous elections in 2006.

He continued that the committee does not open centers for it in Jerusalem because of the prohibition of the Israeli occupation, and we consider every Jerusalemite registered, whether for the purpose of election or candidacy and therefore his name is included in the elections' lists.

He stated that the committee registers Jerusalemites who vote in six postal centers inside Jerusalem, while the rest of Jerusalemites can go to 15 centers in the vicinity of the city to register and vote on the same day, and this does not affect the electoral process.

The Election Commission affirmed the right of Jerusalemite citizens to run and vote in the 2021 Palestinian elections.

The census of the Palestinian population in the world until the beginning of the year 2021 indicates that their number reached 13.7 million, including 417 thousand people in occupied Jerusalem.

According to the Election Commission, 118,000 citizens are entitled to vote in occupied Jerusalem.

The head of the political bureau of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, stressed the necessity of holding elections in Jerusalem and the participation of the people of the city in the elections.