Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas yesterday called for early presidential and parliamentary elections, prompting the ruling Hamas movement to accuse him of staging a coup d'etat.
"I decided to call for early presidential and legislative elections," Abbas said to applause during an eagerly awaited speech in Ramallah to lay out his plans for ending a spiraling political crisis.
"Basic law stipulates that the people are the source of power," he said. "Let the people have their say and decide."
"I will talk as quickly as possible with the central elections commission to launch the preparations" for the ballot, he said.
The hardline Islamist Hamas movement, which has only been in power since March, immediately rejected the move.
The Hamas-led government said Abbas' actions were "a coup d'etat against the will of the Palestinian people."
"We reject the call by President Abbas to hold early elections, as this contradicts Palestinian basic law," Hamas official Ismail Raduan said.
The Palestinian Basic Law, the effective Constitution, does not address the issue of early elections.
Hamas says the absence of such a provision prohibits holding early polls, while the Abbas entourage says such an election can be held since there is no passage specifically prohibiting it.
The Palestinian parliament was elected in January and is due to remain in office until the end of 2010.
Senior Abbas aide Yasser Abed Rabbo said the elections "will take place between now and three months."
"All legal opposition to these elections will be examined in conformity with the president's powers," he said.
During an impassioned speech, Abbas said he had the authority to fire the Hamas government and vowed to prevent civil war that some observers warned would break out if he chose to call early polls.
"Firing the government is a constitutional right that I can exercise when I want," he said.
"Despite the suffering, the pain, the confrontations, whoever is responsible for them, we will not allow ourselves to sink into a civil war," Abbas said. "Palestinian blood will remain a border that will not be crossed."
The announcement by Abbas was greeted with cheers and celebratory rounds of gunfire into the air from supporters of his Fatah party in Gaza City.
During his speech, Abbas slammed militant groups in the coastal strip, where Hamas is extremely popular, for continuing to fire rockets into Israel after the Jewish state pulled troops and settlers out last year.
"Israel said bye-bye to the Gaza Strip, so let us leave the Gaza Strip ... to investment ... but yet there are those who until now insist on firing the rockets ... I am sure that's not in the national interest of our people," he said.
"The Gaza Strip could have become an area to import workers from abroad, but we see the Gaza Strip living in poverty and unemployment," he said.
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