Palestinian Authority - 2022 General Elections
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on 15 Janauary 2021 announced dates for the first Palestinian elections in more than 15 years, setting legislative polls for May 22 and a July 31 presidential vote. Abbas's Fatah party, which controls the Palestinian Authority based in the occupied West Bank, and the Hamas Islamists, who hold power in Gaza, have for years expressed interest in taking Palestinians back to the polls.
“The President instructed the election committee and all state apparatuses of the state to launch a democratic election process in all cities of the homeland,” the decree said, referring to the occupied West Bank, Gaza and occupied East Jerusalem. The statement said Abbas expects polls “in all governorates of Palestine, including East Jerusalem”, which was annexed by Israel following the 1967 war but is considered occupied territory.
the last elections back in 2006, which Hamas won, did not change anything after Abbas and its Western and regional allies refused to acknowledge their victory. A long-standing rivalry between the two main Palestinian factions was seen as a leading factor in stalling progress towards a new vote. But Fatah and Hamas have been engaged in unity talks in recent months, reaching an agreement in principle in September to hold elections in 2021. Hamas "welcomed" Abbas's announcement, stressing that the "Palestinian people have the right choose their own leaders and representatives". Hamas said in a statement: “We have worked in past months to resolve all obstacles so that we can reach this day.”
A rare poll by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Research carried out in 2020 said Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh would beat Abbas in a presidential election.
Elections would pose a major risk for Abbas’s Fatah party and also for Hamas as both faced protests in recent years over their inability to reconcile with one another, advance Palestinian aspirations for statehood or meet the basic needs of those in the territories they govern. Fatah and Hamas have been publicly calling for elections for more than 10 years but have never been able to mend their rift or agree on a process for holding them.
The statement from Abbas said he expects polls will be held "in all governorates of Palestine, including east Jerusalem", which was annexed by Israel following the 1967 Six-Day War but is considered occupied territory. Israel bans all Palestinian Authority activity in east Jerusalem, and there was no indication the Jewish state would allow a Palestinian vote within the city. Israel's right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces his own re-election contest in March 2021, describes Jerusalem as Israel's "undivided capital".
The last Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006 saw Hamas win an unexpected landslide. The polls resulted in a brief unity government but it soon collapsed and in 2007, bloody clashes erupted in the Gaza Strip between the two principal Palestinian factions, with Hamas ultimately seizing control of Gaza. The densely populated strip is home to two million Palestinians, while 2.8 million live in the West Bank. Numerous attempts at reconciliation, including a prisoner exchange agreement in 2012 and a short-lived coalition government two years later, have failed to close the rift.
Intra-Palestinian reconciliation talks have taken on greater urgency following a series of US-brokered normalisation agreements signed between Israel and four Arab states. The deals to normalise ties with Israel signed by the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan were condemned across the Palestinian political spectrum. They also broke with decades of Arab League consensus against recognition of Israel until it reached an agreement to end the Palestinian conflict that included the creation of Palestinian state, with a capital in East Jerusalem. Palestinian leaders also voiced hope that the incoming administration of US President-elect Joe Biden will lead to renewed diplomacy on the Palestinian cause.
“The elections that are proposed have a number of problems. One is the legislative council elections which are really the product of the Oslo Accords. So having the elections would give legitimacy back to the Oslo Accords, which have been disastrous and which the Palestinian leadership should abandon,” says Kamel Hawwash, Chair of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and a founding member of the British Palestinian Policy Council (BPPC). Hawwash also criticises the notion that the elections should not include Palestinians living abroad like him. According to the Hamas-Fatah joint statement, only Palestinians living in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem can vote in the elections.
Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan will not take part in the elections, according to the Cairo agreement. As a result, there is not enough information available to judge whether these elections are truly democratic, leading to create a really representative Palestinian government, according to Hawwash.
Yahya Sinwar was re-elected as leader of Hamas’s political wing in the Gaza Strip for a second four-year term, according to officials with the group running the besieged enclave. His re-election on 10 March 2021 came before May 22 Palestinian legislative polls, the first Palestinian vote in 15 years. Ismail Haniya, chief of Hamas’s political bureau and overall leader, congratulated Sinwar in a statement. “The movement’s commitment to [internal] elections every four years confirms our deep faith in the principle of rotating power,” he said. “Today, the Hamas movement recorded a milestone in its history and is choosing its leaders in Gaza in a way that reflects authenticity and solid legitimacy.” Palestinian news agency Maan quoted a Hamas source as saying that Sinwar won 167 out of 320 votes in Gaza’s Shura Council. Bassem Naim, a senior Hamas figure, confirmed that Sinwar had fended off a challenge from Nizar Awadallah, one of Hamas’s founders. For his part, Awadallah stressed his support for Sinwar, saying in a statement: “We stand by his side in every position to achieve the goals of our project and our movement.” Sinwar is a former member of the group’s armed wing who spent more than 20 years in an Israeli prison after being convicted of abducting and killing two Israeli soldiers. He was released in a 2011 prisoner swap. “Sinwar’s victory shows the man maintains a strong grip on things inside the movement, especially within its vital components such as the military wing,” said Gaza political analyst Adnan Abu Amer.
The political wing has closer ties to Qatar and Turkey and tends to be more pragmatic in its dealings with Israel. The armed wing has closer ties with Iran and favours a more confrontational approach towards Israel. After taking up his position in 2017, Sinwar encouraged mass protests along the fence that separates Gaza from Israel as an alternative to its traditional tool of firing rockets into Israel. The protests – dubbed the Great March of Return – were aimed at drawing attention to Gaza’s poor living conditions and easing Israel’s blockade. Since the launch of the rallies, hundreds of Palestinians have been killed and more than 30,000 wounded by Israeli forces at the fence areas around Gaza. The protests fizzled out in 2019 under an unofficial truce in which Qatar provided tens of millions of dollars to Hamas for employee salaries, aid projects and cash payments to poor families in exchange for calm.
Palestinian rival factions Fatah and Hamas agreed in Cairo on 16 March 2021 to a code of conduct to ensure upcoming elections are run based on “transparency and integrity.”
Mohammed Dahlan said 17 March 2021 he expected challengers to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ahead of upcoming Palestinian elections, the former leader of Fatah in Gaza told Al Arabiya in a special interview. “The current institutions will decide who will be on the list of candidates, and if we are going to nominate a specific person for the presidency. But I can guarantee brother Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) that he will not be the only candidate in the upcoming elections,” Dahlan said. “My words are clear. I don’t want to get ahead of events but I can say that he will not be the only candidate,” Dahlan added, without confirming or denying that he will nominate himself in either the upcoming legislative or president elections.
Dahlan, long considered a political rival of Abbas, had been living and based in the United Arab Emirates for years since leaving Gaza. He was also considered one of those expected to challenge Abbas in the upcoming presidential elections. Dahlan addressed criticism of his decision to live in exile in the UAE during a special interview with Al Arabiya. He was asked to address critics who recently said his assistance in getting much-needed COVID-19 vaccines to Gaza was done in order to score political points.
“Firstly, the UAE does not have a greedy interest in the Palestinian cause, not in the past, present or in the future. They have private circumstances which led them to take a sovereign and a political stance to normalize ties with Israel. As for their support in history, the UAE is the second Arab country that supports the Palestinian people financially after the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” Dahlan told Al Arabiya. Dahlan led a Fatah breakaway movement that was poised to the Gaza Strip after a 14-year absence. In February 2021, two of the movement’s representatives returned to Gaza.
“I am not talking about personal achievements. I am talking about a people suffering at least the last 15 years. An increase in poverty rates of the Palestinian people during the past 15 years. An increase in diseases, in stress, and a loss of hope. Therefore, I belong to this group of people who paid the price either in the Palestinian revolution or in building the Palestinian National Authority,” Dahlan said. “I want to fulfill personal and nationalistic duty whether I was in the Palestinian National Authority or not. I have been out of the Palestinian National Authority for the past 15 years nearly. I was not late for day doing my duty and no one handed this duty to me. But, I gave that duty to myself to stand with these people and stand with them during any crisis,” he added.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said 29 April 2021 that the main factions had agreed to delay the first elections planned in 15 years, citing a dispute with Israel over voting in east Jerusalem. The decision spares Abbas’ fractured Fatah party from what was widely expected to be another embarrassing defeat to the Islamist militant group Hamas, which slammed the move as a “coup.” It was welcomed by Israel and Western countries, which view Hamas as a terrorist group and are concerned about its growing strength.
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