West Bank Arabs at polls

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34127, 13 April 1976, Page 21

West Bank Arabs at polls

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright) JERUSALEM, April 12. Israeli troops will keep away from two dozen towns and villages on the occupied West Bank today for municipal elections expected to strengthen the position of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. The P.L.O. is banned from open campaigning, but stu-

dent rioting which swept West Bank towns recently is seen here as a blow to the Government’s efforts to counter the guerrilla group’s influence.

Vigorous campaigning for the elections, when 88,000 electors are to choose more than 200 candidates for local councils, ended in a carnival atmosphere last night, with cars and trucks touring voting areas blaring last-minute messages through loudspeakers. While Israeli soldiers will stay away from the towns, Army sources said they would stand by to deal with any disturbances or attempts to disrupt voting. Radical candidates, most of them young men with the backing of P.L.O. sympathisers and the Raikah (New Communist) Party, have said they are confident of ousting many of the older mayors and councillors.

For the first time in West Bank history, women have been given the vote, and now make up more than one third of the electorate. Also for the first time, four of the 537 candidates are women. The Israeli Minister of Defence (Mr Shimon Peres) said Israel would let even the most militant P.L.O. supporters take power “if there is no lawful reason” to bar them from office. However, sources close to the Israeli Government expressed concern that a strong showing by militants would increase tensions on the West Bank — scene- of two-and-a-half months of unrest.

The “Financial Times” in an editorial or. Israel’s problems on the West Bank, said: “There is every prospect that today’s municipal elections in the West Bank will exacerbate the tensions between the Arabs and the occupying Power. For much of its short history, Israel

could claim to have been relatively successful in handling the problem of the Arab minority within its own borders . . . Several factors have contributed to the deterioration of the situation.

‘The prosperity which came to the West Bank through easy access to Israeli markets has been severely denied by the worldwide recession and the extreme difficulties of the Israeli economy . . . Arab opinion has been offended by the establishment of new Israeli settlements. Dr Kissinger’s step-by-step diplomacy appears to be stalled with little prospect of any

new partial agreements on either the Egyptian or Syrian fronts. “The Palestine Liberation Organisation has started to make some kind of transition from terrorism pure and simple to a degree of political activity . . . and a substantial proportion of the candidates in today’s West Bank elections openly declare themselves to be supporters of the t L.O. “Finally, the Arabs in the West Bank and in Israel may well have been encouraged by the success of the Moslems in the Lebanon in challenging the traditional dominance of the Christian community there.”