There is widespread belief among the Palestinians and the international community that the issue of voting for the Palestinians in East Jerusalem was only a pretext used by Abbas to avoid elections which would endanger his legitimacy already eroded by internal divisions within Fatah and the probable win of Hamas, the Islamist movement ruling in the Gaza Strip.
‘’The issue of East Jerusalem provided the justification for the PA’s decision to postpone the elections,’’ according to Ghait Al-Omarin, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former foreign policy advisor to Mahmoud Abbas.
‘’Abbas has never been clear on the reasons and urgency of these elections.The situation is such that Fatah would end at the third or furth position in these elections,’’ he said.
EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell put the blame on Israel for the recent decision of Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas to postpone he scheduled Palestinian legislative elections.
Speaking to reporters upon his arrival at a EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels on Monday, Borrell noted that the decision of postponing the elections will be discuss during the meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council.
‘’We will discuss how to proceed, how to support the Palestinians on this issue. We have been pushing them a lot for holding elections and unhappily the fact that Israel is not allowing them to do elections in East Jerusalem has made them decide not to hold this election,’’ he declared.
The decision to postpone the elections, the first in 15 years, scheduled to take place on May 22, was announced by Abbas on April 29.
One day after this announcement, Borrell called the postponement ‘’deeply disappointing.’’ ‘’We strongly encourage all Palestinian actors to resume efforts to build on the successful talks between the factions over recent months. A new date for elections should be set without delay,’’ he added.
Abbas declared that the decision to postpone the elections came after the failure of all international efforts to persuade Israel to allow the inclusion of Jerusalem in the elections.’’ However, there is widespread belief among the Palestinians and the international community that the issue of voting for the Palestinians in East Jerusalem was only a pretext used by Abbas to avoid elections which would endanger his legitimacy already eroded by internal divisions within Fatah and the probable win of Hamas, the Islamist movement ruling in the Gaza Strip.
‘’The issue of East Jerusalem provided the justification for the PA’s decision to postpone the elections,’’ said Ghait Al-Omarin, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former foreign policy advisor to Mahmoud Abbas.
‘’Abbas has never been clear on the reasons and urgency of these elections.The situation is such that Fatah would end at the third or furth position in these elections,’’ he said.
‘’It was an ill-advised, ill-conceived gambit to call elections. Now we are stuck in a lose-lose. It is not just a political lose-lose. The security situation on the ground has become suddenly much more tense. And the possibility for escalation has suddenly become very real in the days after the postponement,” Al-Omari added.
Beside legislative elections, a presidential election was also originally scheduled in July.
At a meeting with 13 ambassadors from European Union countries days before the announcement of the postponement, Israel’s foreign ministry’s political director Alon Bar urged them not to heed claims of Israeli interference in the election made by officials close to Abbas.
During the meeting, he emphasized to the ambassadors that the elections in the Palestinian Authority are an internal Palestinian issue, and that Israel has no intention of intervening in them nor preventing them.
A request by the Palestinians, sent to Israel, had asked that 6,300 East Jerusalem residents be permitted to vote in the election at local post offices. Israel has not responded to the demand but in former elections in 1996, 2001 and 2006, Israel allowed the participation of East Jerusalem residents.
During the meeting with the European diplomats, Alon Bar reminded of the EU mission’s remarks to the U.N. Security Council about the importance of meeting the ‘’Quartet Principles’’, and the problematic nature of the terrorist organization Hamas’ participation in the Palestinian Authority elections.
The Quartet – made up of the US, UN, EU and Russia – has set criteria in the past for Palestinian election candidates, stating that they must abandon violence, recognize Israel and recognize agreements signed between the PLO and Israel. Hamas still vows the destruction of the State of Israel. The Biden administration reaffirmed its commitment to those conditions last week.
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Someone might want to inform Mr. Borrell that there is no “east Jerusalem.” Jerusalem is a single, undivided city–and has been since 1967.