The Israeli police announced, on Monday, that it had increased its preparations to secure the local elections scheduled to be held on Tuesday, with more than 19,000 of its members, amid expectations of a decrease in the participation rate due to the war on the Gaza Strip.
Elections are scheduled to be held in 241 local and regional councils and city councils, after being postponed twice since the outbreak of war on October 7, 2023.
Israeli occupation army soldiers actually cast their votes last week in special polling stations, set up in army camps in the Gaza Strip as fighting intensified.
The police announced, in a statement published on their official account on the
More than 7 million Israelis have the right to vote on the future of their city for the next five years, in today’s local authority elections. While voting was postponed until next November 19 in 11 municipalities whose residents were evacuated in the south and north due to the war.
According to the Hebrew website The Marker, it is estimated that voter turnout in this year’s elections will be low, as public attention is focused on the war in Gaza and the displacement of tens of thousands of residents from their homes.
Polls are scheduled to open at 7 a.m. local time and close at 10 p.m., while they will close early and residents will be notified of this in small towns with a population of up to 350 voters, according to the same source.
According to the Hebrew Walla website, this year 24,910 candidates are competing in the local elections within about 3,705 lists, and 801 candidates are competing for the position of mayors and local councils, including 83 women.
The original date for the local elections in Israel was October 30, 2023, and another date was set for January 30, 2024, but it was postponed again, before February 27 was set as the final date.
Early elections
Opposition leader Yair Lapid, who served a short stint as prime minister before Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power in late 2022, said: “Tuesday’s vote shows that there is no problem holding elections even during a war.”
In a post on the social media platform X, Lapid called for parliamentary elections to be held as soon as possible in order to elect a new government.
During the past weeks, thousands of demonstrators came out in Tel Aviv and other cities to demand the conclusion of an immediate prisoner exchange deal, and to call for the overthrow of the government and the organization of early elections, while the police forces responded by using violence to disperse the demonstrators.
Most Palestinians in East Jerusalem, which Israel occupied in 1967, have the right to vote in municipal elections, but they are not entitled to vote in legislative elections.
The Palestinian population constitutes about 40% of the city’s population, but the majority of them boycotted the municipal elections repeatedly.
Since last October 7, Israel has been waging a devastating war on the Gaza Strip, leaving tens of thousands of civilian victims, most of them children and women, in addition to an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe and massive destruction of infrastructure, which led to Tel Aviv being brought before the International Court of Justice on charges of genocide. Collective.
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2024-02-27 06:03:41
