'Like we don't exist': Palestinians in West Bank deny having say in Israel vote

Palestinians in the occupied West Bank see little prospect of Israeli elections changing their lives under occupation.

Jabal al-Baba, occupied West Bank - In Jabal al-Baba, a small Bedouin community east of Jerusalem, Israel controls almost every aspect of daily Palestinian life, from building homes and access to water to freedom of movement.

However, when Israelis go to the polls on October 27, the vast majority of the roughly three million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank will have no say in choosing the government that will rule their lives under occupation — unlike the 700,000 Jewish settlers who live in about 300 illegal settlements and outposts across East Jerusalem, including East Jerusalem.

"They treat us like something that doesn't exist," said Attaullah Al Jahalin, a representative of the Jabal al-Baba community.

"You don't have the right to vote. You don't have the rights you have in a democratic country."

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 is under full Israeli military and civil control.

Many residents here raise sheep and goats next to houses made of corrugated metal. Most of them belong to the Jahlin tribe, whose families were expelled from the Negev (Negeb) desert region by Israeli authorities in the years following the Nakbat, the violent ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Zionist militias in 1948.

"You are forbidden to build a house. You are forbidden to build a street. You are forbidden to build a school," said Al Jahalin. "Everything is forbidden to us."

The residents of Al-Jahlin said that in addition to repeated destruction, they face constant pressure from Israeli soldiers and settlers.

He said: "In the past few years, we have had more than 100 demolition operations in our community. "We were constantly renovating our homes."

Israel says it demolishes Palestinian buildings built without permits that are nearly impossible for Palestinians to access. Israeli human rights group Bimkom found that authorities rejected more than 99 percent of Palestinian building permit applications in Area C between 2021 and 2024.

While Palestinians are restricted from development, Israeli settlements, which are illegal under international law, are expanding at an unprecedented rate. According to Peace Now, an Israeli anti-settlement watchdog group, in April, Israel's Security Cabinet in a decision approved 34 new settlements, including outposts that were legalized retroactively.

For the ignorant, the goal is clear: to drive out their community and make way for settlers.

"There is an Israeli plan to displace the people who are here," he said. "All these are tools of pressure. We must leave these areas in favor of settlement projects."

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 coalition of parties united in their stated goal of "preserving and strengthening Israel as a Jewish and democratic state."

The opposition group has not announced its 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 show that the two factions are in the running, and neither side appears on track to win a majority. Meanwhile, most leaders of the Jewish-led opposition bloc have ruled out joining forces with Arab-led parties representing Israel's Palestinian citizens, who make up about 20 percent of its population.

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

"Decades of occupation have taught Palestinians not to expect the new government to change basic Israeli policies," said Jamal Juma, coordinator of the grassroots campaign "Stop the Wall." He noted that it was the center-left Israeli Labor Party - and not the right - that started settlement building in the West Bank after 1967.

For Jabal al-Baba, the clearest test of what a change in government means is E1, a strip of land between Jerusalem and the illegal settlement of Ma'ala Adumim, where the community is located.

The E1 project would connect the settlement to Jerusalem, bisect the West Bank and threaten 18 Bedouin communities, including Jabal al-Baba.

In August 2025, Israel agreed 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 is ours."

This year, the government sold the land in two tenders that were timed before the elections. Israel's attorney general has since moved to delay parts of the process until after the vote, which Smotrich is challenging in court.

Ahead of the election, Eysenkot dismissed the idea of a Palestinian state as an "illusion" while supporting the "strengthening" of settlements. But as for the E1 tender in August, he said: "Not now." He called the advancement of this project a mistake at international expense and said that extreme right-wing ministers and settler violence are harming Israel's position abroad.

This puts him at odds with the current administration over the timing of E1 - but not over the idea of a settlement in the West Bank.

"There may be democracy, but only for the Jewish people," said Karim Gibran, director of field research at the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, which describes Israel's rule of Palestinians as apartheid.

"Even if governments change, the system remains," he said. "If there is a left, it is the Zionist left and it is not very influential in the political life of Israel."

In Jebel al-Baba, where the expansion of settlement threatens the future of the community, the ignorant have reached a similar conclusion.

"It could be Eysenkot, it could be Netanyahu," he said. Israeli politics is on the table right now. It doesn't matter who runs it.

Whoever forms the next Israeli government will continue to exercise decisive power over the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank, which was divided into 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 limits extend across the entire West Bank.

Referring to Israel's control over movement between Palestinian cities and villages, as well as access to water and electricity and the borders of this land, Juma said from the Stop the Wall campaign: Israelis control everything in the West Bank.

He added: "In every city and every village, they have built a gate at the entrance.

Friday also warned that continued fragmentation could turn the West Bank into isolated areas and separate Palestinian communities from each other.

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

Jubran, from B'Tselem, said that stopping the route depends on international pressure, not the outcome of Israeli elections.

"If the international community was determined to take practical steps to stop the E1 project, it could," he said. "Until it doesn't, E1 will continue."

In Jabal al-Baba, the risk of forced re-displacement is increasing.

Al-Jahlin said his family had been kicked out of Niqab once before - but he wouldn't be leaving again.

"I am not ready to continue my father's life," he said. As a Palestinian, whether I die or live in this land, I will remain."