‘Like we don’t exist’: Palestinians in West Bank denied say in Israel vote

Jabal al-Baba, occupied West Bank – In Jabal al-Baba, a small Bedouin community east of Jerusalem, Israel controls almost every aspect of Palestinians’ daily life, from building homes and accessing water to moving freely.

Yet when Israelis head to the polls on October 27, the vast majority of the nearly three million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank will have no say in choosing the government that rules their lives under occupation – unlike the 700,000 Jewish settlers living in some 300 illegal settlements and outposts across the territory, including occupied East Jerusalem.

“They treat us like something that doesn’t exist,” said Atallah al-Jahalin, Jabal al-Baba’s community representative.

“You don’t have the right to vote. You don’t have the rights that you would have in a democratic state.”

About 450 people live in Jabal al-Baba, a community in Area C, which makes up about 60 percent of the occupied West Bank and remains under full Israeli military and civil control.

Many residents here raise sheep and goats beside homes made from corrugated metal. Most belong to the Jahalin tribe, whose families were expelled from the Naqab (Negev) desert region by Israeli authorities in the years after the Nakba, the violent ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Zionist militias in 1948.

“You are forbidden from building a house. You are forbidden from building a street. You are forbidden from building a school,” said al-Jahalin. “Everything is forbidden to us.”

Residents face constant pressure from Israeli soldiers and settlers, al-Jahalin said, on top of repeated demolitions.

“In the past few years, we have had more than 100 demolition operations in our community,” he said. “We were constantly rebuilding our homes.”

Israel says it demolishes Palestinian structures built without permits, which are almost impossible for Palestinians to obtain. Israeli rights group Bimkom found authorities rejected more than 99 percent of Palestinian building permit applications in Area C between 2021 and 2024.

While Palestinians are restricted from developing, Israeli settlements, which are illegal under international law, are expanding at a record pace. In April, Israel’s security cabinet was reported to have approved 34 new settlements in a single decision, including outposts legalised retroactively, according to Peace Now, an Israeli anti-settlement watchdog group.

For al-Jahalin, the aim is clear: to push his community out and make way for settlers.

“There is an Israeli plan to displace the people who are here,” he said. “All of this is a means of pressure. We have to leave these areas for the benefit of the settlement projects.”

E1 exposes limits of government change

In this month’s vote, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party and the far-right coalition it leads face a tight race against an opposition alliance consisting of an assortment of parties that are united in their stated aim to “preserve and strengthen Israel as a Jewish and democratic state”.

The opposition grouping has not declared an official leader, but former army chief Gadi Eisenkot, of the centrist Yashar party, is seen as its most likely candidate for prime minister.

Recent polls indicate the two blocs are running neck and neck, with neither side appearing on course to win a majority. Most leaders of the Jewish-led opposition bloc, meanwhile, have ruled out joining forces with the Arab-led parties that represent the Palestinian citizens of Israel who make up about 20 percent of its population.

But for many Palestinians, a change at the top would mean little.

Jamal Juma’, coordinator of the grassroots Stop the Wall campaign, said decades of occupation have taught Palestinians not to expect a new government to shift fundamental Israeli policies. He pointed out that it was Israel’s centre-left Labour Party – and not the right – that began building settlements in the West Bank after 1967.

For Jabal al-Baba, the clearest test of what a change in government would mean is E1, a strip of land between Jerusalem and the illegal settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, where the community sits.

The E1 project would link the settlement to Jerusalem, cutting the West Bank in two and threatening the forced displacement of some 18 Bedouin communities, including Jabal al-Baba.

In August 2025, Israel gave final approval to 3,401 settler homes in E1, which far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said would “bury” the idea of a Palestinian state. A month later, Netanyahu vowed “there will be no Palestinian state. This place belongs to us.”

This year, the government put the land up for sale in two tenders, timed to advance before the election. Israel’s attorney general has since moved to delay parts of the process until after the vote, and Smotrich is challenging that in court.

In the lead-up to the election, Eisenkot rejected the idea of a Palestinian state as “delusional” while also expressing support for “strengthening” settlements. But asked about the E1 tenders in August, he said: “Not now.” He called advancing the project a mistake with an international cost, and said far-right ministers and settler violence were damaging Israel’s standing abroad.

That puts him at odds with the current government over the timing of E1 – but not over the idea of settling the West Bank.

“There may be a democracy, but only for Jewish people,” said Kareem Jubran, field research director at Israeli rights group B’Tselem, which describes Israel’s rule over Palestinians as apartheid.

“Even if the governments change, the system remains,” he said. “If the left exists, it is a Zionist left. It is not very influential in Israeli political life.”

In Jabal al-Baba, where settlement expansion threatens the community’s future, al-Jahalin has reached a similar conclusion.

“It may be Eisenkot, it may be Netanyahu,” he said. “Israeli policy is already on the table. It doesn’t matter who carries it out.”

A system no election will dismantle

Whoever forms Israel’s next government will continue to exercise decisive power over the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank, which was divided into three areas – A, B and C – as part of the Oslo Accords in the 1990s.

Israel’s control is most direct in Area C, but its restrictions reach across the West Bank.

“The Israelis are controlling everything in the West Bank, every single thing,” said Juma’, of the Stop the Wall campaign, citing Israel’s control of the movement between Palestinian cities and villages, as well as access to water and electricity and the territory’s borders.

“Every city and every village, they have constructed a gate at the entrance,” he added.

Juma’ also warned that continued fragmentation could turn the West Bank into isolated enclaves, cutting Palestinian communities off from one another.

“It will be like open prisons, like Gaza,” he said. “But here we have different Gazas.”

Jubran, of B’Tselem, said stopping that trajectory depends on international pressure, not the outcome of Israel’s election.

“If the international community were determined to take practical steps to stop the E1 project, it could,” he said. “As long as it is not, E1 will go ahead.”

Back in Jabal al-Baba, the threat of renewed forcible displacement is looming large.

Al-Jahalin said his family was expelled from the Naqab once already – but he will not leave again.

“I am not ready to live the life of my father,” he said. “I, as a Palestinian, will stay, whether I die or live on this Earth.”