RAMALLAH: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Wednesday he would press ahead with a January parliamentary and presidential election opposed by the rival Hamas movement if reconciliation efforts failed.
“We are still offering the same proposal, but if it’s refused, then the sole alternative is to go to presidential and parliamentary elections,” Abbas said, referring to a unity government including his Fatah party and Hamas.
Abbas was speaking at the first meeting of the Palestinian National Council (PNC) in 13 years.
More than 300 members of the PNC, the top legislative body of the Palestine Liberation Organization, convened to determine how to replace, whether by appointment or vote, six deceased members of the PLO’s 18-member Executive Committee.
Hamas, which won a 2006 parliamentary election and seized control of the Gaza Strip a year later in fighting with Fatah, says it will not accept a new poll in January unless a “package deal” is reached with Abbas’ party. “Going to an election without a (unity) accord is not acceptable because it will not be based upon a national agreement,” Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas official, said in Gaza.
He said that without a reconciliation deal, Hamas would not allow a ballot to be held in the Gaza Strip. Hamas opposes the Western-backed Abbas’ peace efforts with Israel. Egyptian mediation stretching over more than a year has failed to secure a deal on forming a unity government, restructuring security services, ending political arrests in the Gaza Strip and West Bank and establishing an election mechanism.
Abbas opened the session by repeating his insistence that Israel must freeze all settlement activity in order to give the stalled peace talks the kick-start the international community is seeking.
He also reiterated that the Palestinians wanted the talks to resume from the point they left off when they were suspended during Israel’s deadly offensive on the Gaza Strip, under the previous Israeli administration.
The 500-strong PNC is the PLO’s Parliament. Along with all members of the Palestinian legislature, the PNC also includes members of the Palestinian diaspora.
Among Executive Committee members who died in recent years was iconic Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who passed away in 2004 in a Paris hospital.
The PLO groups the main Palestinian nationalist factions, including Abbas’ Fatah, but not Hamas. It created the Palestinian Authority (PA) in July 1994 when Arafat returned to Palestinian land after 27 years in exile.
The international community recognizes the PLO as the “sole and legitimate” representative of the Palestinian people, but Hamas disputes that claim and has in the past sought to create a rival body.
