International discussion about these elections has been almost exclusively about Hamas, a welcome distraction for Israel from the suppression of the democratic rights of the Palestinians of Jerusalem. In the past two years, Israel has surrounded its settlements in East Jerusalem with an 8m-high concrete wall, cutting off the Palestinian city from its hinterland in the West Bank. Ramallah and Bethlehem - once suburbs of East Jerusalem - are now as remote as foreign countries on the other side of international-border-style crossings.

The 94% of Palestinian Jerusalemites barred from voting in their city have to travel to the other side of Israel's wall to vote, passing barbed-wire fences and the nervous teenagers armed to the teeth at Israeli checkpoints. Israel knew few Palestinian Jerusalemites would choose to spend an entire day on this arduous journey, and was thereby trying to deprive almost the entire Jerusalem electorate of its democratic right to vote.

In order to create the fiction that Jerusalemites were participating in elections from "abroad", those Palestinians permitted to cast their votes in their own city had to do so in post offices. Last year, Palestinian negotiators tried to open talks on expanding the Jerusalem voting arrangements to include the entire electorate. Israel ignored their requests until the last minute, despite its obligation under the Road Map to facilitate "free, fair and open" Palestinian elections. Under international pressure, the two parties sat down to discuss arrangements a week into the three-week campaigning period. In few democratic societies would election experts and lawyers be negotiating the right to campaign with secret policemen and soldiers. Such is the absurdity of building Palestinian democracy under the boot of Israeli occupation.

So arrangements fell into place at the last moment after many Palestinians had been arrested for crimes such as putting up an election poster or attending a rally. The west tells us we must reform and build democracy - what has taken place is the best possible campaign material for those opposed to a negotiated solution.

Occupied East Jerusalem has the same legal status as Jenin, in the West Bank. East Jerusalem is not "disputed territory", it is illegally controlled and occupied by an Israeli state that claims the Palestinian half of the city as Israeli.

Israel wins nothing from its tactics of intimidation and obstructionism. By 3pm yesterday, 100 Palestinians had voted at Jaffa Gate: nearly six times more than in presidential elections last year, when Israel mixed up voter lists. Yet if only one had voted, that individual would alone have represented the fact that East Jerusalem remains Palestinian.

Nor will Israel's scorn for Palestinian democracy serve its interest in peace and security. There is only one way to end the conflict and that is to negotiate a just solution based on international law.

· Hind Khoury is the Palestinian Authority's minister of state for Jerusalem Affairs www.nad-plo.org

Clues

The Associated Press is the major source of international news for U.S. news media. Virtually all AP news reports about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict go through its bureau in Israel.

Clue #1 On Nov. 1, 2004, while we were in the Palestinian territories meeting with the AP bureau chief in the West Bank, he received a phone call from a correspondent. Israeli military forces occupying the area had just killed a 12-year-old Palestinian boy who had been throwing stones from approximately 300 meters away. A soldier had shot the boy in the throat with live ammunition. The bureau chief immediately phoned the bureau in Israel with all the details.

Later, back in the U.S., we looked up AP coverage of the killing of this child. We found no story. We did find an AP photo on the internet, but could not find a single American publication that had printed it – perhaps because there was no news story accompanying it.

Clue #2 On October 17, 2004, several armored Israeli vehicles invaded a Palestinian refugee camp. The vehicles stayed for twenty minutes, asserting their control. There was no Palestinian resistance. At one point an Israeli soldier poked his gun out of his vehicle, aimed at a boy nearby, and pulled the trigger. The 14-year old boy was shot in the lower abdomen. (He survived.) A Reuters photographer photographed this incident, and an Associated Press cameraman filmed it. The AP cameraman sent the video to the bureau in Israel, where it was erased.

In other words, AP had video footage of an Israeli soldier intentionally shooting a young Palestinian boy who was not attacking him, and they erased it. How could such footage not be considered newsworthy?

Clue #3 On Dec. 2, 2004, newspapers around the country received an Associated Press story about a candidate for the Palestinian presidency. The story reported that the candidate was in an Israeli prison, but, oddly, did not mention that he was being physically abused while in custody. It also failed to mention that over 8,000 Palestinians are incarcerated, that they are routinely abused, and that many are tortured, despite never having been charged with a crime.

This article carried a Palestinian byline and dateline. In reality, however, the Palestinian journalist given as the author of this report does not write articles. He phones information in to the AP bureau in Israel, where a journalist living in Israel writes the story. This ghost writer is almost always either an Israeli citizen or a person with strong ties to Israel.

It seems fraudulent to portray articles as having been written by one party in this conflict, when, in reality, they have been written by members of the other party.

Clue #4 On May 11, 2004, an AP news story reported: “The Geneva-based Defense for Children International and Save the Children, based in Sweden, said that as of May 2004, 373 Palestinians under 18 were being held in Israeli detention centers and prisons. At least three of the detainees are under 14...The groups charged that the treatment of Palestinian child prisoners by Israeli authorities amounts to a pattern of violence that has gone unchecked for years...”

This is important information for American taxpayers, since the US gives Israel over $10 million per day, and people throughout the world are aware that the US is Israel’s major supporter, thus blaming Americans for Israel’s actions. Oddly, however, AP sent this story out only on its Worldstream newswire, and not to American newspapers. Thus, people everywhere else in the world learned about these reports on Israeli human rights violations, but Americans did not.

Clue #5 In 2004, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Thomas Moorer passed away. Moorer, a World War II hero and one of the country’s highest ranking officers, had long been an outspoken critic of Israel – particularly of Israel’s brutal attack on a U.S. Navy ship, which had killed 34 American servicemen and injured 172. Just months before his death, Moorer appeared on Capitol Hill heading an independent inquiry, which found that Israel had “committed acts of murder against U.S. servicemen and an act of war against the United States” – words he repeated in an op-ed in the military’s Stars and Stripes newspaper on Jan. 16, 2004.

On Moorer’s death three weeks later, AP quickly sent out a 366-word report. The story included a sentence stating that Moorer had “...accused Israel of deliberately attacking the USS Liberty, an American spy ship.”

Within a few hours, AP sent out an expanded, 529-word obituary. The above sentence had been removed, and with it any hint of Moorer’s views on Israel: “The American people would be goddam mad if they knew what was going on.”

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon may not have died a physical death on Dec. 18, but his political career has passed away after he suffered a debilitating stroke. Analysts say that Sharon’s absence from the political scene would mean that a new stage would have to be built upon which Israeli inner politics would continue to wrangle with a Palestinian peace process.

This idea originated after Sharon defected from the Likud party he founded to establish a new political organization. His efforts brought new personalities from different political ideologies that sought to preserve their ideologies perceived to be under threat in the evolving Likud. Sharon’s motives were clear: The Likud party was in his opinion becoming an obstacle to achieving his vision of implementing Palestinian apartheid after getting his hands on Jerusalem and as much of the West Bank as possible in return for leaving the Gaza Strip.

Sharon’s plan was simple: Israeli expansion, first into Palestinian lands and then beyond. The difference between Sharon’s vision and that of the Liked is that Sharon wants to implement the expansion into Palestinian territory and beyond step by step while the Liked wants to take Palestinian lands in one step.

I disagree with those that say that Israeli policy will change with the absence of Sharon, whether locally or within the region. I disagree with them because Israel has one concept that will never change. The concept is establishing a state from the Nile to the Euphrates. The only difference is how to apply this plan.

Have Zionist goals changed? No, because the gang that has ruled Israel since it was planted in the Arab world have been terrorists and war criminals. The goal of colonizing has not changed since the establishment of Israel. According to the UN partition plan, the Israelis were to get 48 percent and the Palestinians 52 percent of the land. If we look in reality now, Israelis have stolen more than 60 percent from what the United Nation decided. This is in addition to the remaining land under the Israeli military occupation, which most Israelis say is theirs. Whether Sharon has died physically or just politically, the reality will not change.

There are reports that the Israeli establishment did not care for Sharon’s health. According to one of his doctors, he is suffering from an unknown brain disease. This reminds us very much of the way Yasser Arafat died from an unknown disease. A manager of a hospital in Israel criticized allowing Sharon to go to his farm in such a delicate state. The political death of Sharon has led to one change: Giving all power to his deputy Ehud Olmert. According to high security sources, the acting prime minister was given control of Israel’s nuclear weapons. Israel has confessed indirectly to its nuclear arsenal, which threatens Arab countries.

Comment: Yeah, good ole AIPAC - the gang involved in spying on America.

Vox populi – vox Dei, the voice of people is the voice of God, said the Romans, and as every oracle, it can be interpreted in many ways. It can be seen as a normal and regular election of the opposition party after the ruling party overstayed its course. It can be seen and the change of generations in power. It can be seen as rejection of PNA’s willingness to give up on refugees and al Aqsa, of their inability to bring in the young generation of Marwan Barghouti and Intifada warriors. It can be seen as the vote for clean uncorrupted rule.

However, we shall be mistaken if we miss the spiritual lesson of this election. Islam is a native Eastern form of Christianity, akin to the Nestorian church of Presbyter John. It is a faith of solidarity and equality. The native people of the Holy Land rejected the materialist neo-liberal paradigm of Mammon and went the way proposed by the great Anglo-American poet TS Eliot of creating a true Christian society. We can follow their example and chose solidarity and spirit in stead of consumerism and aggression.

The Holy Land won’t and can’t be profaned. The mad idea of turning it into a military base, a refuge for crooks, Jewish dating agency cum the gay capital of the world collapsed. Islam is exceedingly generous and tolerant to all believers, and believing Christians and pious Jews will have no problem with the choice of their brothers. Nor will the free of spirit: they will enjoy the benefits of protective society. The Hamas rule in Bethlehem proved there is nothing to fear. The Hamas leaders expressed their willingness to share power with their Fatah brothers.

Should the new Hamas-led parliament recognise the supremacist and racist Jewish state? Certainly not. It may reject the partition and invite all permanent residents of the Holy Land to form together a new authority for the whole of Palestine from the River Jordan to the Sea. It may use the lesson of Greece that refused to recognise the former Yugoslavian republic of Macedonia as ‘Macedonia’, for this name is already taken. Likewise, the noble name of Israel does not fit the Jewish state. Whether is belongs to the Christian Church, as we believe, or to the pious Jews, as they think, or even to the descendents-in-flesh of the historical Israel, the Samaritans of Nablus, this title does not suit the Zionist state. We should not use the holy name of Jerusalem for the synonym of the Zionist government, either. The West never called the government of the German Democratic Republic by the name of Berlin, as it would provide them with the legitimacy they lacked – they called it ‘Pankow Government’, after the neighbourhood of Berlin they were based in. Likewise, we may refer to the Jewish authority by the name of their de facto seat, Tel Aviv, and seek to replace it with one rule from Jerusalem the Holy.

The racist Jewish state forbade us, its citizens, to participate in this election, and banned you from voting for the Knesset in Jerusalem. Let it be the last separate elections for the native and adoptive dwellers of the Holy Land.