Israel Denies Bedouin Right to Elections
Some 35,000 Bedouin residents of Israel's southern Negev have been denied the right to hold their first local council election after the Israeli parliament passed a law at the last minute to cancel this month's ballot.
The new law gives the government the power to postpone elections to the regional council, known as Abu Basma, until the interior ministry deems the local Bedouin ready to run their own affairs.
Legal and human rights groups say the move is an unprecedented violation of Israel's constitutional principles. Taleb al-Sana, a Bedouin member of Israel's parliament, has written to its speaker warning that "it is not possible to have democracy without elections."
The vote in Abu Basma was scheduled to take place six years after the council was established under the transitional authority of a panel of mostly Jewish officials appointed by the interior ministry.
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