BOSTON (JTA) — Voters in three Boston-area districts backed a nonbinding resolution supporting Palestinian rights in Israel.
The ballot question passed with 56.6 percent in favor in Tuesday’s election. Tallies were incomplete in two additional state legislative districts within Boston where the initiative appeared on the ballot.
The referendum, sponsored by a group called Massachusetts Residents for International Human Rights, an offshoot of the Somerville Divestment Project, asked voters if the state representative from their district should be instructed to vote in favor of a nonbinding resolution calling on the U.S. government “to support the right of all people, including non-Jewish Palestinian citizens of Israel, to live free from laws that give more rights to people of one religion than another.”
A question with the same text as Tuesday’s nonbinding resolution was passed in the Boston suburbs of Somerville and Cambridge in 2008.
Two years earlier, Somerville had voted against questions asking whether Palestinian refugees had the right to “return to their land of origin” and whether Massachusetts should divest its holdings in State of Israel Bonds.
