Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Wednesday he will order early parliamentary and presidential elections in response to what he called the "coup" by Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Senior officials in the West Bank said there was not yet a clear timetable for the vote, which Abbas hopes will restore Fatah to power but whose outcome is far from certain.
"We will call ... for early legislative and presidential elections and we will not wait for approval from those sitting over there in Gaza or from those sitting abroad," Abbas told a key forum of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).
Abbas indicated last month when he dismissed a Hamas-led government on June 14 following the Islamists' violent take-over in the smaller of the two Palestinian territories that he would seek elections before the scheduled 2010 timetable.
Earlier on Wednesday, he said he would issue decrees shortly to set the processes in motion. Hamas defeated Abbas's secular Fatah faction, which has long dominated the PLO, in a parliamentary election 18 months ago and it insists its Gaza leader, Ismail Haniyeh, is still prime minister. It again strongly rejected holding any new vote.
But Abbas told the PLO's Central Council, meeting in the West Bank city of Ramallah, that agreeing to hold elections in Gaza would be a condition Hamas must accept if it wanted to negotiate with Fatah on ending the schism that has jeopardised Palestinians' hopes of founding a state in the two territories. A senior Hamas official said that, on the contrary, reaching a new national consensus must be a condition for elections.
Some analysts suggest holding elections in the West Bank alone could entrench the division with Hamas. Some argue Hamas could even repeat last year's success, which was partly founded on disillusion with stagnation and corruption under Fatah and which prompted international sanctions.
Those sanctions have been lifted on Abbas's new government in Ramallah while the Gaza Strip, home to one in three of the 4 million people represented by the Palestinian Authority, has been all but cut off by border closures by Israel and Egypt. Leading constitutional lawyers have questioned Abbas's appointment of a new government under Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, noting it has not been approved by parliament, where Hamas has a majority. Fatah officials have said the PLO Council could instead take on the role of legislature as parliament is not functioning, partly because many Hamas lawmakers have been jailed by Israel.
In his speech, Abbas said: "Hamas dug their grave with their own nails as a result of the crimes they carried out in Gaza. They brought upon themselves their loss of legitimacy." He added: "I challenge anyone to say that the decisions we have taken are illegal."