 Welcome back to my YouTube channel, this is Daniel Rosel and I create videos about Jerusalem and Israel. Recently, Walid Abu Taiba, a resident of Baitz al-Fafah, made headlines after he announced that he intended to run in the upcoming election for the mayor of Jerusalem, which is set to take place this year on October 31st. The move is significant because Abu Taiba is a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem. Since Jerusalem became the capital of the state of Israel in 1948, the city has only ever elected Jewish mares, starting with the first office holder, Daniel Oster, and continuing through to the incumbent Moshe Leon. Jerusalem is approximately 60% Jewish and 40% Arab, with a small Christian minority wed somewhere between Muslims and Jews. However, those demographics aren't the explanation for why the mayor of Jerusalem has never yet been an Arab. East Jerusalem came under Israeli control in 1967 in a move that the majority of the international community continues to regard as an illegal annexation. Since that time, Arab residents of the capital have remained largely hostile to the state of Israel and its official institutions. To express their opposition, East Jerusalem Arabs have largely refused to engage with the Jewish Israeli bureaucracy that runs the city, both the part west of the green line and over it to the east. This opposition has taken several forms and one of them has been refusing to field candidates for mayoral elections or engaging politically with the system at all. The Palestinian Authority, or the PA, which sees the creation of a Palestinian state as the central part of its goal, has in the past exerted heavy pressure on Jerusalem Arab residents who try to break-rank with the party line and run for office anyway. The PA is prevented by Israeli law from operating in the capital and Israel's application of this law is strictly enforced. However, this law doesn't prevent the organization from using tactics like blackmail, ostracization, and extortion to cow any dissidents into submission. For the 2018 elections, a small list called the East Jerusalem Party was formally convened. However, reportedly under pressure from the PA, it was disbanded before it could field candidates. Abu Taiba's run for office in October is going to be purely symbolic. When you combine the fact that the city has a Jewish majority with the fact that many of its Arab residents refuse to participate in the elections, Abu Taiba's mathematical chances of securing victory are pretty much hamstrung for the gecko. So while it's pretty much a non-runner from a probability standpoint, his announcement does have symbolic import. His official decision to run on the list is significant in that it may signal a greater interest among some levels in Palestinian Jerusalem society to engage more formally with what most Arab Jerusalemites refer to disparagingly as the occupation municipality. But just in case, here are his credentials. Abu Taiba is a 68-year-old attorney, he is married with three children, and he holds degrees from Hebrew University and Columbia University in the United States. He previously worked as an inspector at the Ministry of Finance in Jerusalem. Thanks for watching today's video, and if there's a topic about Israel and Jerusalem that you'd like to see me cover, please feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments.