This weekend, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, himself in the 14th year of a four-year term, installed a new unelected cabinet. This news was met with little fanfare from the international community, which has grown indifferent to the absence of democracy in the West Bank.
Meanwhile, the muted response from Western commentators over this development stands in stark contrast to the immense scrutiny of Israel’s election last Tuesday, in which some of Israel’s detractors falsely claimed that Israel “denies Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza the right to vote.”
This double standard is glaring, and the accusation is misinformed. Often missing from the narrative of those quick to blame Israel for Palestinian disenfranchisement is that when Israel came into being, it offered citizenship to all Palestinian Arabs within its borders.
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