Defying 50-Year Taboo, Palestinians Run for Jerusalem Elections

At Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa mosque, it was seen as a worrisome enough development for the preacher to send up an alarm. “Don’t try to change the identity of the holy city,” Ismail Nawahda exhorted. What had so agitated the imam at Islam’s third-holiest shrine is the unraveling of the Palestinians’ half-century boycott of municipal elections in Jerusalem. Even as the U.S. transfers its embassy to Jerusalem on Monday -- a move that Palestinians say undermines their dream to build a capital in the city’s east -- there is also a growing recognition that the boycott has negative consequences.

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