GAZA CITY, 1 June 2005 — Palestinian Authority officials yesterday delayed partial re-elections in the Gaza Strip to stave off a new crisis between Hamas and Fatah, sparked when the fundamentalist group threatened to boycott the polls. Officials were forced to intervene when Hamas refused to contest the new vote in three Gaza Strip municipalities and one West Bank village, ordered after the main ruling Fatah party demanded a recount of May 5 local elections.

“We have decided to delay the elections until further notice in keeping with a request to avoid all problems on the Palestinian street,” said Jamal Shobaki, chairman of the local elections committee, from the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Ibrahim Abu Al-Naja, chairman of an umbrella group of national and Islamist parties, petitioned the local elections committee to delay the vote originally scheduled for today after Hamas refused to take part. “The committee can only agree to his request because it is a national consensus,” Naja told a news conference in Gaza City.

The partial revote affects 37,000 Palestinians living in the southern Gaza town of Rafah, Beit Lahia to the north and the central Bureij refugee camp, which the Islamist group Hamas won by a small majority on May 5. Ahmed Hilles, a senior Fatah official in Gaza, said his party agreed to the delay but criticized what he called Hamas’ “negative and hasty” boycott.

“Hamas decided not to take part in what is another vote in Rafah, Beit Lahia and Al-Bureij,” the Islamist group’s spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said. “We call on our people to boycott these elections and not recognize their results.”

The showdown came after Egyptian mediators spent a week in the occupied territories on a mission to defuse rumbling disagreements between the radical faction and the main party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Abu Zuhri had reproached Fatah for insisting on the revote was held today and said Hamas first wanted guarantees that they would be fair.

“We agreed on certain guarantees with the Egyptian delegation and Fatah regarding the re-elections, but Fatah retreated from the agreement last night. So there are no guarantees to secure honest reelections,” Abu Zuhri said.

PA officials have confirmed the revote could affect the overall results in the three municipalities. Fatah emerged the overall victor in the May 5 elections in more than 80 Palestinian municipalities, but requested a recount of votes in Rafah, Bureij and Beit Lahia.

Hamas’ success in the polls, just months before parliamentary elections in July and the ensuing tension has seen relations between the two groups plummet. Some Palestinian officials believe a recent spike in violence — which has shaken a de facto truce — was partly engineered by Hamas in the dispute. Members of Fatah have called for the July 17 elections to be delayed, amid increasing fears that Hamas could make sweeping gains, cutting into Fatah’s power base.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is disappointed with the refusal of US President George W. Bush to put pressure on Abbas to crush armed groups, aides said yesterday. “The Palestinians came out feeling no pressure to fight terror and that they don’t have to take immediate action,” Sharon told US congressmen in Jerusalem on Monday, in comments relayed to AFP by a member of his office.

The Israeli government was initially more circumspect over last Thursday’s summit between Abbas and the US president — the first time that Bush hosted a Palestinian leader at the White House. “Mr. Bush wants to be conciliatory toward Mr. Abbas in public to show that he has turned over a new leaf after Arafat’s death and the Palestinians are taking advantage by putting off dismantling terrorist organizations,” an aide to Sharon told AFP.

At the time, Bush told Abbas “the United States and the international community applaud your rejection of terrorism. All who engage in terror are the enemies of a Palestinian state, and must be held to account.” Israel has criticized Abbas for not dismantling armed groups fighting the Jewish state’s near 40-year-long occupation of Palestinian land, despite a de facto truce engineered by Abbas which has been largely observed by militants since January.

In another development, Israel’s Supreme Court yesterday gave the government five days to justify a controversial law that separates families and prevents Palestinians married to Israelis from obtaining Israeli citizenship. The court delivered the order after left-wing Yahad opposition MP Zehava Gal-On filed a suit against the law, which the Israeli parliament voted to extend for three months by a majority vote Monday.