Six thousand Arab residents of east Jerusalem are registered to vote in Sunday's Palestinian elections, Israeli police said yesterday, citing official
Palestinian voter registration figures.

According to police, Jerusalem Arabs eligible to vote in the city will be allowed to cast an absentee ballot in six east Jerusalem post offices Sunday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m, while tens of
thousands of other Arab residents of east Jerusalem are slated to be voting in other areas in the West Bank.

After the vote, the ballot boxes will be transported by postal vans, escorted by police jeeps, to a checkpoint between Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Ramallah, where they will be handed over to Palestinian election officials.

Caught in the middle between Israel and the Palestinian National Authority, Jerusalem's 230,000 Arab residents are not very enthusiastic about the upcoming elections.

In the 1996 elections, about 10 percent of Jerusalem's Arab residents actually turned out to vote. It is expected that the vast majority of Jerusalem Arab voters will not participate in Sunday's vote either.