High turnout in Palestinian election. Ismail Haniya declares his Hamas will refuse to disarm if it wins tight race with Fatah in Palestinian general election Wednesday, Jan 25
January 25, 2006, 12:47 PM (GMT+02:00)
Another leader Mahmoud a-Zahar added that Hamas would not alter its charter either including the clause calling for Israel’s destruction.
The Islamist terror group is participating in Palestinian elections for the first time as are the other Palestinian radical factions, excepting only Jihad Islami.
Palestinian voters mobbed the 1,008 polling stations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip from the early hours of Wednesday Jan 25, to elect 132 members of parliament and their next government. Half of those seats will be chosen from 300 candidates on 11 national lists, half from 400 contestants in the constituencies. Of the 1.34 million eligible voters 58% had cast ballots three hours before balloting closed. Party activists agreed not to bear arms in the polling stations. But they are crowding the entrances. Indelible ink is used on voters’ fingers. In Gaza, Hamas’s green baseball caps and Fatah yellow flags and posters of its founder, Yasser Arafat, are prominent. In Jerusalem, where a small number of Palestinians are casting their votes in post offices, Israeli police prevented nationalist Knesset members Effi Eitam and Arye Eldad and four protesters from demonstrating against the election taking place in the Israeli capital.
More than 13,000 Palestinian security officers are patrolling the main towns, after receiving permission to carry side-arms. Passage has been eased at the IDF’s West Bank roadblocks. International monitors told Hamas to withdraw voting papers listing its candidates which they were passing round to voters.
Washington’s position on relations with a Palestinian government in which Hamas is represented is ambivalent. US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice said two days ahead of the vote that the US government would not hold talks with Hamas unless it renounces terrorism and recognizes Israel, but will not cut its ties with a Palestinian government in which the terrorist group is present.
DEBKAfile notes that the Mahmoud Abbas’s ruling Fatah list is headed by a jailed terrorist, Marwan Barghouti, who was sentenced to five life terms for orchestrating terrorist attacks in which Israelis were murdered.
Washington put up a $2m campaign war chest to boost Abu Mazen’s electoral chances, which our Palestinian sources disclosed he spent mostly on an unsuccessful bid to buy off independents who threatened to narrow the Fatah edge over Hamas. Local Fatah activists have been directed to employ every means to prevent their party’s defeat. |
