RAMALLAH: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday urged the Hamas movement to accept immediate general elections as solution to internal Palestinian split.
“We offer immediate presidential and parliamentary elections to end the issue of internal split. Those the people vote for would lead,” Abbas said during a visit to the house for elderly people in West Bank city of Beit Sahour, to the east of Bethlehem.
Abbas’ remarks, which came a day after rival Fatah and Hamas decided to postpone the inter-reconciliation dialogue until Aug. 25, seemed to be a new proposal to maintain the dialogue from collapse.
“We proposed holding immediate presidential and parliamentary elections as solution to the internal split. Who wins the elections leads the country,” said Abbas who heads Fatah party, Hamas’ bitter political rival holding sway in the West Bank.
In response, Hamas immediately rejected Abbas’ call saying that the elections issue was one of five files the Cairo dialogue needs to settle first.
Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman, said, “First, there must be an agreement on the five files which are the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), the government, the security, the reconciliation and the elections.” Barhoum said “Abu Mazen (Abbas) should first provide a suitable atmosphere for holding the elections instead of uprooting Hamas in the West Bank.” He also accused Abbas and his Fatah movement “of obstructing understanding on all of the five issues.”
In Gaza, meanwhile, the Hamas government on Monday announced it would free 20 Fatah members as a goodwill gesture. In a statement, the Hamas interior ministry said that Prime Minister Ismail Haniya made the decision on the eve of a Muslim feast marking Prophet Mohammad’s ascension that falls on Monday.
Hamas and Fatah have been cracking down on their political opponents since Hamas routed pro-Abbas Fatah-dominated security forces in deadly Gaza clashes in 2007. Politically-motivated arrests are considered one of the obstacles in the way of Egypt’s efforts to broker a power-sharing deal between the two groups.
The Egyptian-brokered dialogue has failed so far to come up with an agreement to restore political unity to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and the Fatah-ruled West Bank.
Since the beginning of the Cairo-hosted talks, Hamas and Fatah have talked on forming a transitional unity government until holding the elections in January 2010.
Sami Abu Zuhri, another Hamas spokesman, said that his movement was not afraid of elections but underlined that “it should be preceded by lifting the siege on the Gaza Strip and releasing MPs detained by the Israeli occupation authority.”
He said that reconstruction of Gaza, international guarantees that MPs would not be kidnapped anew by the Israeli forces, electing new members for the Palestinian national council (parliament in exile) and reformation of the judicial committee for the central elections should precede general elections.
The spokesman emphasized “Hamas was keen on achieving Palestinian national unity”, adding that it exerted and still is exerting big efforts for the sake of realizing such unity.”
