RAMALLAH, 10 January 2005 — PLO chairman Mahmoud Abbas won yesterday’s Palestinian presidential election by a landslide with a 46 percent lead over his nearest rival Mustafa Barghouti, according to exit polls.
The former prime minister had been widely expected to be elected as the successor to the late Yasser Arafat.
But Abbas’ bid to usher in a new era of diplomacy will be vulnerable to fighters who boycotted the vote and fired two rockets into Israel during polling in a show of force against his calls for a cease-fire.
Exit polls released after the 1900 GMT close of voting showed Abbas, candidate of the dominant Fatah movement with over 65 percent compared with about 20 percent for his nearest challenger, pro-democracy activist Mustafa Barghouti.
Abbas supporters celebrated in the streets of Ramallah, honking car horns, waving flags and holding his portrait aloft. Five other presidential candidates, ranging from a Marxist ex-guerrilla to an academic under US house arrest on suspicion of funneling funds to Hamas, trailed far behind.
Palestinian election officials decided in mid-afternoon to extend polling in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem by two hours to 9 p.m. because, they said, some voters were being held up by Israeli Army checkpoints. Monitors said turnout was depressed by strict Israeli limits on polling stations in East Jerusalem.
But they said Israel appeared to have largely kept its promise to ease the passage of Palestinians through checkpoints.
“Anecdotal evidence coming in is that restrictions have been quite effectively lifted,” said Les Campbell, a spokesman for foreign observers led by former US President Jimmy Carter. “(Overall) it has been a very good day. The moment is historic,” European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana said while observing voting.
The voting extension followed reports of low turnout in cities such as East Jerusalem, Nablus and Ramallah — a cause for concern in Abbas’ camp that he might fall short of a broad popular mandate needed to swing fighters behind a peace push.
It remained unclear whether lagging turnout arose from boycott pressures by fighters who score about 25 percent in opinion polls, travel restrictions or apathy since a victory for Abbas seemed to many Palestinians a foregone conclusion.
In the West Bank, five gunmen burst into an election office, firing into the air and complaining that the names of their relatives had been left off registration lists. In Jerusalem, there was some confusion over voter lists that was eventually resolved, with the help of international observers.
Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat said the Palestinians serve as an example to the Arab world, noting that seven candidates are competing. “This is a message to President Bush, to the rest of the world, that the problem we have here is not the kind of system we have, it’s not reform, it’s the Israeli occupation,” Erekat said.
Opinion polls had suggested Abbas would win between 50 and 65 percent of the vote.
Israel, who has sized up Abbas as a man they can do business with but criticized his intention to co-opt rather than confront fighters, reasserted that progress toward peace depended on a halt to “terrorism and violence”.
After decades as a backroom technocrat in Arafat’s circle, Abbas waged a populist campaign pledging to uphold his old guerrilla boss’ quest for total Israeli withdrawal from occupied lands but parted from him in urging an end to violence.
Israel plans to withdraw 8,000 Jewish settlers from tiny Gaza this year. But it rules out ceding East Jerusalem or taking back refugees and has won US assurances that it should never have to give up much larger settlements in the West Bank.
On the Israeli political front, a new government was to be sworn in today after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s coalition pacts with veteran peacemaker Shimon Peres’ Labor Party and a religious faction were submitted to Parliament yesterday. With new partners, Sharon will have a parliamentary majority for the first time in six months to press ahead with the removal of all 21 Gaza settlements and four of 120 in the West Bank.
— With input from agencies
