Abbas will chair the steering election committee. (Reuters)

GAZA, December 28, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – The Palestinian Authority and resistance factions have agreed to join forces for a successful legislative election next month as Israeli carried on Wednesday, December 28, with its air strikes on Gaza and further took them near the Lebanese capital Beirut.

In a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday, December 27, Palestinian factions and the Palestinian Authority (PA) agreed to set up a steering committee chaired by the Palestinian leader to ensure a trouble-free and successful legislative elections due on January 25.

"We want to render the elections a success," Khalil Nofal, representative of Hamas movement in the committee, told IslamOnline.net

Nofal said the PA and resistance factions are resolved to scupper Israeli schemes to bar the Palestinians of Al-Quds (occupied to cast their votes.

"We urge the international community to send observers to supervise and facilitate the upcoming elections, especially in Al-Quds and the West Bank," he said.

Israel is still undecided whether to allow Al-Quds natives to cast the ballot though it disfranchised them on December 21.

Saeb Erekat, chief Palestinian negotiator who attended the meeting, said the Palestinians have not received an official reply from Israel on holding polls in Al-Quds.

"We have send nine official messages to the Israeli side asking for forming a joint committee to oversee the elections in Al-Quds and dispatching ballot boxes but to no avail," Erekat said.

"This is ridiculous," he said. "The candidates will swing into action in less than a week."

Erekat stressed that the Palestinians insist on holding the elections on time in Al-Quds, Gaza and the West Bank.

Dahlan addresses the media during a news conference in Ramallah to announce the united Fatah list. (Reuters)

In Ramallah, a breakaway faction of Abbas's mainstream Fatah faction formally announced on Wednesday that it would reunite for January elections, reported Reuters.

Mohammed Dahlan, one of the leaders of the faction, made the announcement at a news conference shortly before Abbas was expected to submit a new united list of candidates for the elections.

Beset by damaging divisions, Fatah had initially submitted two lists -- one made up of the party leadership and a second of young guard that seeks a greater share of power, including Dahlan, that called itself Future and advocated reform.

"The Future list agreed that Fatah should have a single list to ensure the movement's unity and its victory in the January 25 elections," President Abbas's security advisor Jibril Rajub said.

 

Fatah decided last week to merge the two lists, headed by jailed Intifada leader Marwan Barghuti, in a bid to maximize its chances of electoral success, faced with a serious challenge from Hamas.

Joining the Israeli vitriol, the United States and the European Union threatened to cut their aid to the PA should Hamas won seats in the new legislature.

The resistance group has won in three out of four West Bank cities in last week's final local ballot.

Hamas, which saw its popularity soaring during more than four years of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, entered electoral politics for the first time at the end of 2004.

It secured a landslide victory over Fatah in the first-ever Gaza Strip council elections in January.

Truce Renewal

Hanya denied that Cairo had asked the factions to extend the truce for six months.

Though President Abbas urged the Palestinian factions to renew the truce with Israel, which expires on December 31, they stressed that it would be very difficult breathe a new life into the moribund truce as Israel has stepped up its aggressions recently.

"We will make our stance clear by this time, but anyhow the truce won't be extended most probably," said Khaled Al-Batsh, a senior Islamic Jihad leader, told IOL.

In the meantime, prominent Hamas leader Ismail Hanya, a Hamas leader in Hamas Movement, revealed that Egypt was preparing to host another round of inter-Palestinian talks shortly after the legislative elections.

He denied that Cairo had asked the factions to extend the truce for six months.

Air Strikes

On the ground, Israeli warplanes on Wednesday bombed anew Palestinian targets in the Gaza Strip and near the Lebanese capital in response to rocket attacks by Palestinian resistance fighters.

Palestinian security sources said the air strikes had targeted roads around the towns of Beit Hanun and Beit Lahiya in the north of the territory.

A Lebanese man points toward a huge hole after the Israeli air strike south of Beirut. (Reuters)

The occupation army, which has already declared a part of northern Gaza a security zone, said the roads were being used by activists to reach areas on the edge of the border into southern Israel.

Israeli warplanes conducted raids to the south of Beirut as well.

At least two members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), a pro-Syrian faction headed by veteran Ahmad Jibril, were wounded in the air strike.

Both were wounded in a missile strike "which blew a hole in a concrete armored protection wall in Naameh", south of Beirut, PFLP-GC spokesman Anur Raja told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The air strike on Lebanon came in response to the firing of a series of Katyusha rockets into northern Israel that went unclaimed.

"Israel wants to blame us for the rocket attacks to provoke a hostile reaction against us in Lebanon," said the PFLP-GC's Raja. "We say to our Lebanese brothers that we were in no way implicated."