DELAY OF PALESTINIAN ELECTIONS VIOLATES CAIRO AGREEMENTS WITH FATAH, HAMAS SAYS

Fri 30 April 2021:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has postponed planned parliamentary elections next month amid a dispute over voting in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem and splits in his Fatah party.

Abbas, 85, blamed Israel for uncertainty about whether it would allow the legislative election to proceed in Jerusalem as well as in the occupied West Bank and Gaza on Friday.

The Hamas Islamist movement, which is governing the Gaza Strip, believes that the decision of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to delay the presidential and parliamentary elections is not in line with the agreements reached with Fatah in Cairo.

On late Thursday, Abbas said that the Palestinian authorities had decided to postpone the presidential and parliamentary elections, citing the impossibility to organize the voting in East Jerusalem.

The decision came three months after he announced the first national elections in 15 years in what was widely seen as a response to criticism of the democratic legitimacy of Palestinian institutions, including his own presidency.

The dispute over Jerusalem was the principal reason cited by Abbas in a speech early on Friday following a meeting of Palestinian political factions.

“Facing this difficult situation, we decided to postpone the date of holding legislative elections until the participation of Jerusalem and its people is guaranteed,” Abbas said in the speech on Palestinian TV.

In previous elections, Israel allowed a few thousand Palestinians to vote in Israeli-controlled post offices in East Jerusalem. But this time, the Israelis said they do not have a government to approve the Palestinian request.

Abbas has been in power since 2005 and has ruled by decree for more than 10 years.

“Polls suggest that a majority of Palestinians think it is important to have elections. And people here think that the president is using Jerusalem as an excuse to delay holding them,” Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim, reporting from Ramallah said.

The outcome of an election could see gains for Hamas, which controls Gaza.

Abbas’s chief domestic rival, Hamas had fought a well-organised campaign to defeat a similarly divided Fatah in 2006.

“The Hamas movement believes that the president’s decision to delay the elections is incompatible with the national consensus and the popular support.

This is not in line with what we agreed on in Cairo,” Hamas said in a statement.

The move announced by Abbas has been condemned by many Palestinian parties.

Photo: Candidates from the “People’s Voice” electoral list demonstrating outside the Palestinian Central Elections Commission headquarters in Gaza City on April 27, 2021, during a protest against the possibility of canceling the Palestinian elections. Photo by Ashraf Amra

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