Jerusalem dispute could scupper Palestinian vote

THE Palestinian Authority will cancel January 25 parliamentary elections if Israel goes ahead with its plan to bar Palestinians from voting in disputed Jerusalem, a senior Palestinian official said yesterday.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has been under pressure from his Fatah Party to postpone the vote, amid concerns about the growing political clout of the Islamic militant group Hamas. But Palestinian officials denied Mr Abbas was using Israel’s threat as a pretext to call off the vote.

Mr Abbas said he hasn’t decided yet whether to delay the vote.

“This is a big responsibility that must be studied carefully,” he said.

In Israel, two senior government officials yesterday said it would not let Palestinians vote in Jerusalem because it objects to Hamas’s participation in the race. Hamas, which is committed to Israel’s destruction, is running for the first time in parliamentary elections, and poses a strong challenge to Abbas, a moderate.

“There will be no voting in sovereign Jerusalem,” one official said.

“Our role is not to help Hamas get elected - certainly not in sovereign Jerusalem.”

Sharon aide Raanan Gissin said no final decision has been made. He said allowing Palestinians to vote in Jerusalem post offices for parliamentary elections in 1996 and again this year, when Abbas was elected to succeed Yasser Arafat, were exceptions to the rule banning Palestinian political activity in Jerusalem.

Palestinian Information Minister Nabil Shaath said barring the vote in Jerusalem would be grounds for calling off the ballot.

Speaking from Beirut, senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan said the Jerusalem issue could be resolved in a “compromise among Palestinian factions rather than postponing elections.”

He said if Mr Abbas postpones the election, it would be an admission that Hamas had won.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said the group wanted the election held as scheduled, and was counting on Mr Abbas to keep his promise to honour the date. He has already postponed elections once, from July 17, a date that clashed with Israel’s Gaza pull-out.