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Palestinian Electoral Committee Meeting
with Arafat Postponed
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| Moving across Palestinian areas is fatal |
RAMALLAH, West Bank, May 19 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Palestinian President Yasser Arafat Sunday postponed a meeting with his central election committee to discuss planned polls, as committee members from Gaza were unable to make it to the West Bank, due to Israeli restrictions.
Instead, the meeting of the West Bank members went ahead under the chairmanship of the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s number two Mahmud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
They discussed among other issues the difficulty of organizing polls at all levels when voters cannot move freely owing to Israeli travel restrictions.
They also reviewed the issue of how Palestinians living in East Jerusalem would be able to cast their ballots.
Arafat could meet with the committee, as he had been scheduled to do, on Wednesday, if the Gaza members were able to make the trip across Israel, a Palestinian official said.
Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abd Rabbo earlier said that polls could not be held while Israel enforces an "apartheid" system in the West Bank, curbing the movement of voters and candidates.
"It is impossible to hold elections in this situation, with candidates unable to move around because of the military checkpoints," Abd Rabbo told reporters.
"The situation on the ground confirms Israel has imposed an apartheid system on the Palestinian people," he said, adding that people wanting to move between towns in the West Bank currently have to apply individually to the Israelis for passes that are valid only up until 9:00 pm.
Abd Rabbo said the committee would probably need six months to arrange elections, in line with an announcement last week that legislative elections could take place in early 2003.
Meanwhile, many Palestinian politicians said that they feared that the elections, which Arafat had called for, aimed at suppressing the intifada and the resistance.
Speaking to IslamOnline Saturday, Dr. AbdulAziz al Rantisi, a Hamas leader, said that the elections is the latest method the U.S. and Israel are using to suppress the resistance, after it had failed to do that through various war plans such as the latest “Operation Defensive Shield”.
Al Rantissi added that talking about an election at this time is only a call for shriveling the resistance and to make it seem as though everything is over and stable. “At that point, people will say: leave your guns and go to the polls.”
He added that Hamas’s program in the future will not change as long as the occupation remains and that the situation now is not one for elections but one of resistance.
“Speaking about elections now will only benefit our enemy because we are still in the middle of a war that we haven’t finished yet. If we were asked to take part, Hamas’s response will be that the timing of the elections is not suitable,” he said.
Al Rantissi’s statement refutes what was announced by Saudi officials recently about Hamas vowing to halt its military operations in the coming phase.
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