Abbas adviser moots polls in W Bank alone

"RAMALLAH: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas could hold elections in the occupied West Bank alone if Hamas prevents the ballot from taking place in Gaza, an Abbas aide said yesterday.
Locked in a power struggle with Hamas Islamists who refuse to accept peacemaking with Israel, Abbas is trying to restore his authority and the legitimacy of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) as the representative of all Palestinians, a year and a half after Hamas drove his Fatah forces from Gaza and took control in the coastal territory.
On Sunday, he pledged to hold presidential and parliamentary elections next year if an Egyptian-led bid to secure rapprochement between the rival Palestinian factions fails.
Hamas insists that Abbas’s four-year term ends on January 9 and says it will not recognise him as president after that date. Abbas argues the law says his term ends in 2010.
Hamas, which does not recognise Abbas’s PLO as the sole, legitimate representative of all Palestinians, has demanded a new presidential election, but has rejected Abbas’s demand to hold simultaneous parliamentary elections which could cut short Hamas’s formal dominance of the Palestinian legislature.
“Why threaten elections? What is needed is national reconciliation,” Hamas leader Khalid Mishal told a news conference in Damascus, the Syrian capital.
Abbas said he would give Hamas until the end of the year to resume negotiations, which broke down earlier this month when the Islamist group refused to attend scheduled talks in Cairo.
“If there is no response, we’ll call for new presidential and parliamentary elections,” Abbas said in a televised address.
Mishal said Abbas could call a presidential election “but not a parliamentary one”.
Senior Abbas adviser Nimer Hammad said should Abbas go ahead and call a ballot, Palestinian election officials will be dispatched to Gaza.
“If Hamas forcibly prevents them preparing for elections in Gaza, this is not going to stop the elections from being held. We will hold the elections in the West Bank and Hamas would be responsible for preventing the elections in Gaza,” Hammad said.
Middle East watchers seem increasingly sceptical about an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal any time soon.
“What Israeli prime minister could ever make concessions to a Palestinian leader who doesn’t control all of the guns?” former US Middle East adviser Aaron David Miller wrote in a commentary in the Jerusalem Post yesterday.
“Only by restoring unity to the Palestinian house will a conflict-ending agreement be possible.”
Hamas won the last Palestinian election in January 2006, confounding Western hopes that the vote would reinforce Abbas and his secular Fatah faction as they pursue talks with Israel.
Hundreds of Hamas supporters including many deputies have since been arrested in Israeli raids and by Abbas’s security forces.
Abbas fired the Hamas-led government after the Islamist group took over Gaza in fighting with Fatah loyalists. Fatah still holds sway over the West Bank.
“Whoever believes they can set up a separatist regime in our beloved (Gaza) Strip is ignorant of Gaza’s history,” Abbas said, referring to the territory’s importance to Palestinian nationalism.
l Hamas dismissed yesterday Abbas’s appointment as president of Palestine by the PLO.
Senior Hamas official Mahmud Zahar told a Gaza City news conference that the move by the Palestine Liberation Organisation Central Council was just a desperate attempt by Abbas supporters to preserve his authority beyond the expiry of his term of office.
Sunday’s vote in the Central Council, a key decision-making body of the PLO which established the Palestinian Authority after the 1993 Oslo accords, “bears testament to the crisis which Abbas faces from January 9,” Zahar said.
“The concept of a state requires a land, a people and a government. And in order to be representative, the president of this state must be elected by the people and not appointed by a body lacking any legitimacy like the Central Council.
“He seems to think that this political manoeuvre will get him out of the crisis.” - Agencies"

Source: Gulf Times