Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction yesterday said it had accepted an Egyptian proposal to end a rift with Islamist Hamas and would delay presidential and parliamentary elections due in January.
Egypt is trying to reconcile rival factions Fatah and Islamist Hamas and last week proposed holding elections during the first half of next year to allow more time to work out a power-sharing deal between the two rival groups.
Fatah’s acceptance of the delay now puts the onus on Hamas, which won the 2006 parliamentary election and a year later took over the Gaza Strip after routing forces loyal to Abbas in a brief civil war.
Fatah controls the West Bank and Hamas rules Gaza, territory that Palestinians want for a future state culminating from peace negotiations with Israel.
Presidential and parliamentary elections are slated for Jan. 25 but it remains unclear how they could take place with the Palestinian population split in two territories run by rival administrations that do not recognize one another.
“We have decided to accept the Egyptian proposal, including holding the elections during the first half of next year and no later than this date,” said Abbas Zaki, a member of Fatah’s Central Committee, the group’s executive body.
Fatah made the announcement early yesterday after its Central Committee convened a late-night meeting on Sunday chaired by Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Fatah officials said that Hamas had told Fatah during past round of talks that it prefers an extended delay to elections.
Nabil Shaath, another Fatah official, said that the group did not mind a delay but “there should be a specific date and not to leave the matter open, as if we do then it could be postponed again.”
Hamas has said it would state its position regarding the Egyptian proposal after the Muslim holiday of Eid Al-Fitr due next week.
The Fatah-dominated Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee had already submitted the response to Egypt, said Aahmad Majdalani, a PLO member.
Abbas, who has Western backing, had said he would hold the elections on time with or without a deal with his Hamas rivals. Hamas has threatened to block the ballot if Abbas proceeds with the plan.
Egypt’s mediation efforts for a unity deal between Hamas and Fatah have so far shown no sign of progress in finding a formula for power-sharing in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The Egyptian proposal stipulates that most Hamas political activists jailed by Fatah-led forces in the West Bank and Fatah men held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip would be released after a deal is reached.
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
Through a basement door in southeastern Turkey lies a sprawling underground city — perhaps the country’s largest — which one historian believes dates back to the ninth century BC. Archeologists stumbled upon the city-under-a-city “almost by chance” after an excavation of house cellars in Midyat, near the Syrian border, led to the discovery of a vast labyrinth of caves in 2020. Workers have already cleared more than 50 subterranean rooms, all connected by 120m of tunnel carved out of the rock. However, that is only a fraction of the site’s estimated 900,000m2 area, which would make it the largest underground city in Turkey’s
Soaring high across a gorge in the rugged Himalayas, a newly finished bridge would soon help India entrench control of disputed Kashmir and meet a rising strategic threat from China. The Chenab Rail Bridge, the highest of its kind in the world, has been hailed as a feat of engineering linking the restive Kashmir valley to the vast Indian plains by train for the first time. However, its completion has sparked concern among some in a territory with a long history of opposing Indian rule, already home to a permanent garrison of more than 500,000 soldiers. India’s military brass say the strategic benefits
‘RADICAL LEFT LUNATIC’: Trump earlier criticized Kamala Harris, his new opponent, calling her ‘the ultra-liberal driving force behind every single Biden catastrophe’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called on voters to defend the country’s democracy as he explained his decision to drop his bid for re-election and throw his support behind US Vice President Kamala Harris. As “the defense of democracy is more important than any title,” Biden said that he was stepping aside to deliver an implicit repudiation of former US president Donald Trump in his first public address since his announcement on Sunday that he would not be the Democratic candidate. He did not name Trump, whom he has called an existential threat to democracy. “Nothing, nothing can come in the