GAZA CITY, 30 November 2005 — The violence-marred primaries for the Fatah party were suspended throughout the Palestinian territories yesterday by President Mahmoud Abbas. Allegations of fraud in the elections had fueled doubts about his grip on power.
With a parliamentary election involving a faceoff with the powerful Hamas group less than two months away, Abbas halted primaries to pick his party’s candidates in the occupied West Bank yesterday, a day after suspending them in Gaza.
“Abbas has instructed the election committee to stop the entire election process in all areas as a result of widespread fraud,” Ahmed Al-Deek, a senior Fatah official, told Reuters. The primaries, Fatah’s first, had been seen as a way for Abbas to assert control after Israel’s Gaza pullout in September and prepare his ruling party for the challenge from Hamas.
The turmoil raised new questions about his chances of carrying out the long-delayed parliamentary election as scheduled on Jan. 25 in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
It has also undercut Abbas’ drive to rein in lawlessness in Gaza, seen as a testing ground for Palestinian statehood after Israel ended 38 years of military rule.
Fatah officials said Abbas could order a new round of voting or form a committee to help him select candidates instead, a move that would anger reform-minded politicians.
Public support for Fatah is already eroded by complaints of corruption and misrule and new signs of disarray could boost Hamas, which is contesting a legislative election for the first time after making a strong showing in municipal polls.
Israel and the United States are worried Hamas, sworn to the destruction of the Jewish state, will do well.
Hamas defeated Fatah in student council elections yesterday in the largest Palestinian university, Al-Najah in the West Bank city of Nablus.
Hamas took 40 of 81 council seats compared with 34 for Fatah, which won last year’s poll, final results showed.
The upheaval began in Gaza on Monday when gunmen stormed some polling stations, shooting in the air and complaining the vote was unfair. Fatah halted its primaries there as a result.
“Thousands of names of voters and many of the names of candidates were dropped off (registration) lists,” said Mohammed Dahlan, a Fatah leader in Gaza.
Yesterday, Abbas also suspended voting in the West Bank amid what officials said were dozens of irregularities.
In the West Bank town of Bethlehem, Israeli forces exchanged fire with Palestinian police, wounding a 16-year-old bystander, police said after initially reporting a policeman was hurt.
An Israeli military source said troops on a raid “to arrest terrorists” came under fire. The soldiers fired warning shots in the air and were unaware anyone had been hurt, the source added.
— With input from agencies
