At the end of 2021, I wrote a blog about observing the March 2021 Israeli election in Bnei Brak (Israel's largest Haredi city). I also volunteered as an observer in the next election, in November 2022. Having "done" the Haredis, I decided to go observe an election in a Palestinian ("Israeli Arab") town. It is now almost 2 years since I did this so this blog is very late and I apologize for the delay. I am upset about what has followed that election.
So, this is the story: Having decided to be an observer, I was a little afraid. There had been a lot of items in the Israeli press about shootings in Arab towns/villages and the failure of the government to Police them properly. All the locations I was considering needed to be reasonably close to home, so my focus was "the triangle" - a term the British gave in the 1930s to a group of Arab villages near to Tel Aviv. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_(Israel), I mean the small triangle.
I eventually decided to go to Kfar Kassem,a small town of 25,000 which is a 30 minute drive from my home. Kfar Kassem has an industrial area on its territory, and I had recently bought a ladder from a hardware store there. The (very large) store turned out to be entirely Jewish owned, with the property rented from Palestinian owners and paying local authority taxes to Kfar Kassem. I later bought laminated flooring from a shop/warehouse in the Kfar Kassem industrial area. I have been to Kfar Kassem many times, so Kfar Kassem was a safe choice; A town I know well.
I chose to be an observer in the evening, because the evening observers also watch the votes being counted: In Israeli elections every voting booth manually counts its votes at the end of the day and the results are recorded and then sent, with all the paper work associated with the day's voting, to the central election center in Jerusalem.
So in the later afternoon of the election day (election days are a public holiday in Israel and public transport is free), I drove into Kfar Kassem to a primary school where the vote was taking place, using Google Maps as my guide. The entrance to Kfar Kassem has wide roads flanked by shops (many with Hebrew signs), two lanes on each side with parking/ no parking marked in Israeli style (red/white curbs for no parking, blue/white curbs for paid parking) but no traffic lights (they are rare in small Arab Israeli towns). There were plenty of election signs, almost all in Arabic which I can't read but which seemed to refer to local people.
I noticed a lot of men in black, sitting and milling around in a store which appeared to be an Islamic Center (judging by the signs). Israeli Islamists seem to favor dressing in black. I then turned off the main road into a winding, narrow, road that made its way up the hill.
The layout of Palestinian/Arab-Israeli towns tends to be similar to Italian towns in that they mostly sit on the sides of steep hills where the agricultural land is poor (the good land is in the valley) and which are more defensible. The older parts have narrow streets which pre-date cars and driving up towards the school was hard as there wasn't quite enough space on the street which had a lot of parked cars and cars going back down toward the center.
In the late 1990s I was in Catholic Belfast and there were almost no cars on the streets. I realized then that this was a sign of poverty. Well, there was no such problem in Kfar Kassem. There were many cars and some were very nice (11,000 cars with an average age of 8 according to the statistics office). The industrial zone has many car repair places which are cheaper then those in Jewish towns and are popular with Jewish Israelis.
According to the Israel Statistics Office, Kfar Kassem's wealth is in the 3rd decile of Israeli (lowest 30%) of Israeli towns. Only 13% of the 35-55 year olds have a degree, 21% have a full matriculation (After 12 years of school) and 16% of 20-25 year olds are students, however 76% of high-schoolers are entitled to a matriculation certificate and 50% meet university entrance requirements: I think things are changing. My source (related to 2020) is https://www.cbs.gov.il/he/publications/doclib/2022/local_authorities20_1879/193_0634.pdf.
Population growth is 1.8% (Bnei Brak where I was in the previous election, is in the 2nd decile and has population growth of 3.4%).
I eventually found the primary school and then found a safe place to park (I was worried about damage in the narrow streets) and made my way back to the school, where I replaced a woman at one of the polling booths who looked like she had come from Tel Aviv (like me). Near the school there was a building with a large "Meretz" sign.
The school contained several booths and I was at one of them. As is normal in Israeli elections there were also 3 policeman in
the school yard - one elderly volunteer policeman, a woman policeman and
a younger policeman, who was dark skinned and tough looking, the other two looked extremely un-threatening.
Israeli polling booths are run by a trio of paid personnel. Two are party representatives and a third is a "professional" administrator appointed by the election committee (in practice it,s a couple of well paid days work). One of the two party representatives functions as the "chairman" (it was a man) of the booth who welcomes the voters, administers the voting list and reads their details. The "professional" sat to the left of the chairman and also monitors proceedings: The professional takes over when the votes are counted. To the right of the chairman was a representative of "Shas" the
Jewish Sephardi-Haredi party, except that he was a footballer who lived
in Kfar Kassem: Shas had done a deal with the Arab party he represented
and they had swapped representatives. He was supposed to be in Bnei
Brak, where a member of Shas was representing his party.
There is also a guy with a camera hanging round his neck (like the Police cameras) who sits further away from the booth and does nothing but hold the camera (he gets paid about 300$ for doing this).
Voters come in one at a time, present their ID to the chairman and receive in return an envelope (signed by the chairman) which they take behind a screen: A careful count of the envelopes is maintained. The chairman crosses the voter's name off the voter list. The ID is passed between the 3 people manning the booth.
Behind the screen are piles of voting slips, one for each party. There is also a poster listing all the slips and what they represent. Each party is given up to 3 letters to represent their name, which are written on the slip in large letters (the full name is beneath it). The voter chooses the slip for the party they prefer, places it in the envelope they were given, seals the envelope (if they want) and comes out from behind the screen. They insert the envelope into a sealed cardboard box which is in front of the reception committee. The voter gets their ID back and the next voter is called in.
There were no large queues to vote, but there was a flow of voters. The booth chairman was a member of "Ra'am" the Israeli Islamist party (Sunni with Moslem Brotherhood connections) which at the time was the first "Arab party" to join a ruling Israeli coalition. When there was nobody voting, which happened quite a few times, the Islamist chairman was calling people on the voting list, clearly urging them to come and vote. He later told me that he was a student, studying accountancy at Ben Gurion University. He was quietly authoritative.
I was not the only observer. There was also a far right observer, an orthodox Jewish man, probably a teenager still at school. I think he told me he studied in a Yeshiva, but I no longer remember the details. It seemed to me that he had been sent by his Yeshiva. He had a large colored skullcap with small side curls and sported what might be described as the "settler look". In Israel, both synagogues and mosques are major political recruiting grounds. They have within them communities which are close knit and who can be easily recruited to vote by religious leaders.
I recall twice seeing "modern" women voting and taking selfies as they voted. I don't remember seeing anybody in traditional dress but I don't think that is common in Kfar Kassem. In my recollection most of the voters were younger and looked modern. According to the central election office, 63% voted for the Islamist party (their founder came from Kfar Kassem) and 20% for Meretz, who had a woman from Kfar Kassem in their list. 15% voted for the "Joint Arab list" which is the other Arab parties joined together (including the Communist Party). 82 people voted for the Likud, 32 for Labour and 10 for the Far Right Jewish nationalists (I wonder if this was observers casting their vote locally?, I'm not sure how that works). There were various single votes for odd parties, including 2 for the Pirate party.
( source: https://votes24.bechirot.gov.il/cityresults?cityID=634)
