Thousands of members of the Palestinian security forces began casting ballots for parliamentary candidates yesterday in the official start of voting for this week's Palestinian elections.
Some 58,700 security personnel throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip were expected to participate in special early voting in the coming days -- ahead of Wednesday's election -- to allow them to take up positions on election day.
The ruling Fatah Party faces a stiff challenge from the Islamic group Hamas, which is participating in a legislative vote for the first time. A poll released on Friday put the two movements in a dead heat.
PHOTO: AFP
Wednesday's mass deployment is to prevent political violence. Although the two sides have pledged to avoid violence on election day, tensions remain high.
Gunmen, mostly from groups affiliated with Fatah, have repeatedly taken over election and government offices in recent weeks and threatened to disrupt the casting of ballots.
Voting opened on Saturday shortly after 7am and was to continue until tomorrow. Dozens of police lined up at one station in the West Bank city of Nablus to vote.
At the Shawki school, one of Gaza City's two polling stations, about 10 people waited quietly outside for voting to start. The school was heavily guarded, and the voters, wearing civilian clothes, had to present identification and hand over their weapons to the guards before casting their ballots.
"I came to vote because it's a national duty," said Hisham Sakallah, 39, a member of the elite Force 17 security unit.
``I hope the election will pass smoothly so we can send a civilized image to the world about our people and about our respect for democracy,'' he said.
To prevent fraud, forces guarding the stations were not permitted to enter the voting areas, and each voter had to mark his finger with special ink to make sure they did not vote twice. Observers from local human-rights groups monitored the voting.
Sakallah, a longtime Fatah activist, said he voted for the party because he believes it is best positioned to lead the Palestinians to independence.
"They are the people who started this process, and the people able to continue this," Sakallah said.
Outside the station, a small group of Hamas activists wearing the group's trademark green baseball caps and bandanas greeted voters. There were no Fatah activists visible.
Palestinians will choose 132 parliament members -- 66 from national party lists and 66 in local district voting.
Hamas is expected to make a strong showing. Best known for carrying out dozens of suicide bombings in Israel, Hamas has run a well-organized campaign focusing on internal Palestinian issues, such as improving public services and ending government corruption. In contrast, Fatah has been riven by disarray, infighting and widespread perceptions of corruption.
Dozens of disgruntled Fatah activists, angry after being kept off the party's slate of candidates, are running as independents in the district voting, threatening to split the Fatah vote and further boost Hamas. Fatah's party slate also is problematic.
It includes at least two vigilante gunmen widely feared in their towns, including a man who calls himself Hitler and last year executed a suspected informer for Israel in front of a large crowd.
During the election campaign, Hamas candidates have generally adopted a conciliatory tone and been evasive about whether the group would renounce violence.
But at a large rally on Friday, the group's number one candidate, Ismail Haniyeh, made it clear that Hamas remains committed to the destruction of the state of Israel and capturing the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the third-holiest site in Islam.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said he hopes Hamas will moderate its positions once it joins parliament or even the Palestinian government.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
Filipino farmers like Romeo Wagayan have been left with little choice but to let their vegetables rot in the field rather than sell them at a loss, as rising oil prices linked to the Iran war drive up the cost of harvesting, labor and transport. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Wagayan, a 57-year old vegetable farmer in the northern Philippine province of Benguet. “If we harvest it, our losses only increase because of labor, transportation and packing costs. We don’t earn anything from it. That’s why we decided not to harvest at all,” he said. Soaring costs caused by the Middle East
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
RSS