[revenant718]

>> Israel is in de facto control of the lives and futures of all 15 million people "from the river to the sea"

> We're straying from the original topic of disenfranchisement

What a laughable statement. This is entirely the point of the disenfranchisement claim.

[shykes]

In what way is it laughable? Please contribute something of substance.

[webstrand]

To wit, if you get to vote for the HOA board but not for the government that can override every decision the HOA makes, are you meaningfully enfranchised?

They're arguing that due to the failure/stalling of the two-state solution, the PA is effectively not a national government. It administers local services, like policing, courts, infrastructure. But it doesn't control borders, tarrifs and duties, or airspace. The Israeli military operates a parallel legal system that can detain and prosecute them, all under a legal framework that they have no vote or say in. I think its fair to call this a kind of disenfranchisement?

[shykes]

I understand where you're coming from, but this is a flawed analogy.

The legal framework for the Palestinian Authority's existence is a bilateral treaty. Israel did not unilaterally create this flawed administrative entity: it was jointly created with the PLO, as an interim step towards a fully sovereign Palestinian state. The negotiations that followed were also bilateral. These negotiations failed, leaving both sides with an incomplete interim solution. As a result Palestinians are neither citizens of Israel, nor of a wholly sovereign state. They are stateless, that is undeniable. But the reason they are stateless is not that they "have no vote or say". They had a say at the negotiation table in Oslo. They also had a say in Camp David in 2000, when Yasser Arafat walked away from a deal that would have given him a state with its capital in Jerusalem, and started the second intifada instead. They had a say in 2005 when they elected Abbas over reformist alternatives. They had a say in 2006 when they elected Hamas in Gaza. And they have a say now, as Abbas maintains the "pay to slay" program that rewards attacks against Israeli citizens with welfare payments to the attacker's families. There's a reason Israel insisted on overriding security control in the interim state. They couldn't trust the PLO, the very group that killed countless Israeli civilians in shootings, stabbings and bombings, to become the sole guardians of Israeli safety overnight. In Oslo the Palestinian Authority accepted the responsibility to prevent terrorist attacks against Israel. They are free to deliver on that commitment anytime.

My issue with your framing ("the PA is like an HOA"), the parent comment's framing ("Israel solely controls the fate of Palestinians"), and the original comment that started this whole debate ("Palestinians are a disenfranchised part of Israeli population"), is that it strips Palestinians of agency and shared responsibility. It's annoying when you do it. But it's tragic when Palestinians do it to themselves. By perpetuating this myth that they are helpless, blameless victims of external forces, they are making internal reform impossible ("what is there to reform? All our problems are Israel's fault") and any resolution to the conflict impossible ("we are the rebels, Israel is the empire. The only resolution is to blow up the death star").

To tie this back to the original topic of disenfranchisement: even in the flawed interim state created in Oslo, Palestinians have had the opportunity to vote. Not in a state, but in an institution created specifically to chart a path to a state. They elected a president, who then proceeded to cancel presidential elections (the last one was in 2005). They elected a legislative body, who started a civil war and established one of the most violent theocracies in the world. None of this was Israel's doing. To the extent that Palestinians are disenfranchised - denied the opportunity to vote - it is by their own leaders. If anything, it makes me glad Palestine isn't a full-blown state: with leaders like that, the more limits to their power, the better.