Dozens of masked Palestinian gunmen took over election offices in the Gaza Strip yesterday, exchanging fire with Palestinian police and demanding spaces on a list for Jan. 25 parliamentary elections.
The clashes came as the two main factions of the ruling Fatah Party -- the so-called "young" and "old" guards -- announced an end to an internal rift that threatened to bolster the electoral prospects of Hamas militants. Young guard members announced that Fatah will submit a single, unified list for the elections.
After intense negotiations, the two sides came together just two hours before an afternoon deadline yesterday for submitting the list.
"We affirm here that we are going to this election with one list. We are going to elections unified in Fatah to achieve a victory," said senior Palestinian official Mohammed Dahlan, a leader of the young guard.
In Gaza City yesterday, more than 60 gunmen stormed the main election office, exchanging fire with some 500 security forces who rushed to the scene, surrounding the building and setting up roadblocks. One policeman was wounded in the leg by gunfire and whisked away in an ambulance.
In Rafah, gunmen surrounded the election office, but Palestinian police prevented them from entering. In Khan Younis and Deir el-Balah, gunmen made it into the buildings.
All the standoffs ended within hours with the gunmen leaving the scene.
Such activity by gunmen has become increasingly common in the West Bank and Gaza in recent months, underscoring growing lawlessness in the Palestinian territories. Yesterday's violence highlighted the rising chaos within Fatah itself, adding the demands for participation of the Fatah-affiliated Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades to an already volatile mix of competing interests.
The Palestinian Interior Ministry condemned the mayhem, saying in a statement that attempts to take over election offices are "national crimes."
An Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades leader in Khan Younis, Abu Zakariya al Assouili, said his group tried to contact Abbas to push for greater participation in the party list but to no avail.
"We're objecting to a Palestinian election that does not represent a Palestinian vision," he said. "We want the base to dictate our fate, not America or Israel."
Dahlan said that yesterday's healing of the Fatah rift would augur well for stability in the Palestinian territories.
"Now Fatah is unified in one list and its Ministry of Interior has the responsibility of implementing law and stopping chaos," he said.
Fatah has been bitterly divided between party veterans and a young generation of activists -- led by jailed uprising leader Marwan Barghouti -- demanding a bigger role in party decision-making. Two weeks ago, the young guard broke off from the party to protest Fatah's slate of candidates and submitted its own list. Eager to bring the young guard back, Abbas agreed to redraw the party's list of candidates, giving top positions to younger activists.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
RSS