Hamas Demands Palestinian Elections Be Held in East Jerusalem
Hamas will only agree to hold presidential and parliamentary elections next May if voting takes place in East Jerusalem and Hamas is allowed to participate, Haaretz has learned – a condition to which Israel will almost certainly object.
This puts Hamas and Fatah’s agreement to hold elections in the West Bank and Gaza in a different light. A senior Palestinian source told Haaretz that Hamas had set the condition in an effort to torpedo the elections and thus avoid the risk of being forced out of power in the Gaza Strip. Hamas, however, is expected to blame Israel for blocking the democratic process, so that international pressure to allow them to run will be brought to bear, as it was before the parliamentary elections in January 2006. The Palestinian Authority is also expected to press for Hamas participation to embarrass the Israeli government.
The agreement to hold the election was reached two weeks ago in Cairo by Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Meshal and PA President Mahmoud Abbas in a meeting held as part of the two factions’ reconciliation efforts.
Israel is expected to object to any Hamas activity in the eastern part of the capital. The Israeli government will also be subject to public pressure to reject Hamas’ participation in elections altogether, after Hamas won the 2006 elections by a large majority and also came out ahead in the regional elections in East Jerusalem.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
