Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Wednesday he would call early elections, harshly denouncing the Islamic Hamas for its Gaza takeover, declaring, "even the devil cannot match their lies."
In a speech on Wednesday, Abbas asked the Palestine Central Council, a Palestinian Liberation Organization decision-making body, to endorse his call for elections that aides said would be designed to freeze Hamas out of the political arena.
Abbas' aides said they expected the election by the end of the year or early nexy year. His announcement came as the US and other international mediators were moving swiftly to try to revive Mideast peace efforts.
Abbas denounced Hamas in the harshest terms in his speech, blaming the Islamist militants for staging "a coup" against him in Gaza and for provoking Israel and Egypt to seal Gaza's borders.
Hamas is "committing capital crimes, bloody crimes against our people every day, every minute, every hour," he fumed. "There will be no dialogue until they return Gaza to what it was before."
"Even the devil cannot match their lies," he said.
In five days of bloody fighting last month, Hamas crushed Fatah gunmen and the presidential security force in Gaza.
Abbas retaliated by dismissing the Hamas-led coalition government formed with Fatah after last year's elections, and created a caretaker government of technocrats and moderates that governs the West Bank but holds little sway in Gaza.
"We will call on the council to decide on early elections," he said. "We won't exclude anybody from having their say in a democratic way."
In Gaza, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said neither Abbas nor the council was empowered to call elections.
"It is not legitimate to issue such a recommendation," he said. "This council has expired and has no mandate and no authority."
In Jerusalem, the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said the proposed elections did not come up in his talks with Abbas.
Solana was on a last trip to the region before a meeting yesterday in Portugal between the EU, UN US and Russia - the "Quartet" of Mideast peacemakers - with their newly appointed emissary, former British prime minister Tony Blair. The meeting was to follow up on US President George W. Bush's call this week for a peace conference in the autumn.
Abbas said the conference, to be chaired by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, should address the core issues of Israel's borders, Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem.
"We have to be ready to establish a Palestinian state when it comes," he said.
Israel has welcomed the movement to revive peace efforts that stalled in 2000, but has been reluctant to deal with the conflict's toughest issues as long as violence continues and Hamas - which rejects Israel's legitimacy as a nation - remains a political factor.
Palestinian officials said Abbas wanted to hold elections before Israel releases Hamas legislators it has arrested, pre-empting the possibility that they could return to parliament and vote the caretaker government from power.
Israel is unlikely to release the legislators except as part of a prisoner exchange for three captured Israeli soldiers, one held in Gaza and two held by the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon.
To further enhance Fatah's election chances, Abbas announced he would change the electoral system, eliminating regional balloting.
Last year, Fatah candidates fought each other in several constituencies, allowing Hamas to win those seats and contributing to Fatah's unprecedented rout.
Instead, Palestinians will vote for parties, and parliament seats would be apportioned according to the percentage of votes each party received.
Though Abbas said the elections will be open to all Palestinians, Hamas said it would oppose the balloting, and it was hard to see how they could be conducted in Gaza.
STEPPING UP: Diminished US polar science presence mean opportunities for the UK and other countries, although China or Russia might also fill that gap, a researcher said The UK’s flagship polar research vessel is to head to Antarctica next week to help advance dozens of climate change-linked science projects, as Western nations spearhead studies there while the US withdraws. The RRS Sir David Attenborough, a state-of-the-art ship named after the renowned British naturalist, would aid research on everything from “hunting underwater tsunamis” to tracking glacier melt and whale populations. Operated by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the country’s polar research institute, the 15,000-tonne icebreaker — boasting a helipad, and various laboratories and gadgetry — is pivotal to the UK’s efforts to assess climate change’s impact there. “The saying goes
Floods on Sunday trapped people in vehicles and homes in Spain as torrential rain drenched the northeastern Catalonia region, a day after downpours unleashed travel chaos on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza. Local media shared videos of roaring torrents of brown water tearing through streets and submerging vehicles. National weather agency AEMET decreed the highest red alert in the province of Tarragona, warning of 180mm of rain in 12 hours in the Ebro River delta. Catalan fire service spokesman Oriol Corbella told reporters people had been caught by surprise, with people trapped “inside vehicles, in buildings, on ground floors.” Santa Barbara Mayor Josep Lluis
Police in China detained dozens of pastors of one of its largest underground churches over the weekend, a church spokesperson and relatives said, in the biggest crackdown on Christians since 2018. The detentions, which come amid renewed China-US tensions after Beijing dramatically expanded rare earth export controls last week, drew condemnation from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who on Sunday called for the immediate release of the pastors. Pastor Jin Mingri (金明日), founder of Zion Church, an unofficial “house church” not sanctioned by the Chinese government, was detained at his home in the southern city of Beihai on Friday evening, said
TICKING CLOCK: A path to a budget agreement was still possible, the president’s office said, as a debate on reversing an increase of the pension age carries on French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday was racing to find a new prime minister within a two-day deadline after the resignation of outgoing French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu tipped the country deeper into political crisis. The presidency late on Wednesday said that Macron would name a new prime minister within 48 hours, indicating that the appointment would come by this evening at the latest. Lecornu told French television in an interview that he expected a new prime minister to be named — rather than early legislative elections or Macron’s resignation — to resolve the crisis. The developments were the latest twists in three tumultuous
RSS