Simple question about Israeli Democracy

I am an Israeli citizen living in the Shomron, or the West Bank, as you call it. Yes, we all get to vote in Israeli elections. We pay taxes, carry Israeli identity cards, and drive cars with Israeli license plates. We even paid that stupid TV tax (or avoided it), just like the rest of the country.

This is exactly what I’ve been thinking about lately, and what prompted my desire for a deeper (read: more than none) understanding of how representative Democracy and citizenship works in Israel.

Do Israeli citizens living in, say, the United States get to vote in Israeli elections?

As a proportional representation, it’s a messyd emocracy.

One interesting point - I heard an interview yesterday with a voter who had moved to Israel from the USA a year ago. I gathered this meant that some people get Israeli citizenship(? Voting rights?) immediately.

Note there is an ongoing conflict on who gets to decide who is a 'real Jew". The fundamentalist parties have been able to leverage their small number of votes to force the government to install strictly orthodox rabbis as the arbiters of all things religious, which includes deciding who qualifies for things like immigration entry as a member of the Jewish faith.

No. Absentee ballots are available only to those working for the Israeli government (diplomats). Those in the IDF vote on their bases.

Jews who emigrate to Israel (called making aliyah) are granted immediate citizenship along with all rights, privileges, and obligations.

You are perhaps speaking about the Jewish Agency for Israel, which oversees the emigration process. Jews who move here are granted automatic citizenship under the Law of Return. As of 1970, automatic citizenship is also granted to “non-Jewish children, grandchildren, and spouses, and to the non-Jewish spouses of their children and grandchildren.” (from the Jewish Agency website)

The whole “Who’s a Jew” issue only applies to converts, who are relatively rare in Judaism. Even the most Orthodox rabbis haven’t tried to block the immigration rights of people who are Jewish solely from their fathers’ side, although they won’t accept them as Jews.

The problem with becoming, say, a state of the USA - is ceding almost all serious decision making to a remote government whose concern is not focussed on their specific needs. If this happened, too, worst case would be because the Arab minority became too big to ignore. Also, why would anyone want to take on he Middle East headache?

One-fifth of Israel is Arab. If they voted in good numbers as a bloc, the Combined List should get about one fifth of 121 seats or 24 seats - making them tied for second biggest bloc in the Knesset.

The immigration thing is more that they do favour people who are jews, so that anyone who is properly religiously Jewish (maternal line… ) is not denied immigration to Israel … the example was Jewish Somalis…