Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas pledged yesterday to pursue reconciliation efforts with the rival Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip even as they rejected his call for January elections.
“We are going to pursue our efforts for reconciliation” with Hamas, Abbas said a day after calling presidential and legislative elections on Jan. 24.
Abbas issued a decree late on Friday calling elections in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, in a move seen as turning up the heat on the Islamist group to sign a much-delayed Egyptian-brokered deal for Palestinian unity.
PHOTO: REUTERS
But Hamas — which trounced Abbas’s secular Fatah faction in the last parliamentary elections in January 2006 — rejected the move.
“This is an illegal and unconstitutional step because Abu Mazen’s [Abbas’] tenure is over and he has no right to issue any decree concerning this” election, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum said on Friday.
He said Abbas was making a “deliberate attempt to make [Palestinian] divisions permanent,” by calling elections for January.
Hamas yesterday said that Abbas — whose term in office expired in early January this year — should be put on trial.
Abbas “must be tried for usurping power,” deputy Palestinian parliamentary speaker Ahmed Bahar told a news conference in Gaza City.
The decree calling elections “has no value whatsoever from a constitutional point of view,” he said.
Abbas was elected on Jan. 9, 2005, for a four-year term. The Palestinian Authority extended his presidency by one year so presidential and parliamentary elections could be held on the same date.
Hamas has consistently rejected the extension granted to Abbas, and does not consider him to be the legitimate president.
Yesterday Abbas said he was determined to proceed with organizing the polls.
“The elections decree is very serious. It is not a maneuver,” he told delegates of the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s Central Committee gathered in Ramallah.
He insisted, however, that he would not close the door on efforts brokered by Egypt to patch up divisions between Hamas and Fatah.
“Even if we don’t succeed now, we will try again because reconciliation is in the interest of the Palestinian people,” Abbas said.
Hamas and Fatah have been at loggerheads for years, and efforts by Cairo to get the two to sign a unity deal this month failed.
Egypt proposed an agreement that would see new elections being held next June. Fatah has signed the agreement, but Hamas said it needed more time to study it.
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