The President of the Palestinian National Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, announced a few days ago that the executive committee of the PLO, which he leads, “will decide on the formation of a preparatory committee responsible for the necessary preparations for the holding of elections,” still without a specific date.
Abbas’ decree gives the commission a maximum period of two weeks to take new steps in this process.
The Palestinian National Council formally establishes the policy of the PLO and chooses a smaller forum that, in turn, elects the leaders of the organization.
It is an institution independent of the Palestinian parliament, for which no elections have been held since 2006 when Hamas won. This fact was not recognized by Israel and the United States, leading to armed confrontations between the two factions that ended with the administrative separation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories: since then, Mahmoud Abbas’ political party Fatah controls the West Bank and Hamas is in charge of the Gaza Strip.
The elections for the National Council, composed of 350 members, one-third of whom represent the diaspora, would allow the renewal of the Palestinian government after 20 years.
Hamas protests against Abbas
The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) criticized on Wednesday the “unilateral decision” by Mahmoud Abbas to hold elections before the end of the year in order to reconfigure the Palestinian National Council.
“This unilateral decision represents a serious violation of national will and a blatant disregard for the agreements in Cairo, Algiers, Moscow, and Beijing,” said Husam Badran, a senior official of Hamas’ political wing, referring to the national reconciliation agreements between Fatah and the Islamist group.
Thus, he stressed that Hamas “continues to be greatly concerned” about Abbas’ announcement and has emphasized that “this decision deviates from national consensus,” before calling for “the immediate suspension of any unilateral steps and the implementation of what was agreed upon in national meetings, especially regarding the rebuilding of the institutions of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) based on consensus.”
What is the difference between the West Bank and Gaza?
Both the West Bank and Gaza are Palestinian territories captured by Israel, as well as East Jerusalem, in the Six-Day War of 1967.
But there are important geographical differences: while Gaza is an enclave to the south of Israel on the border with Egypt, Cisjordania is a much larger territory, located between Israel and Jordan, with cities such as Ramallah, Bethlehem, Jenin, and Hebron.
Politically, Gaza is controlled by Hamas, while in the West Bank, the predominant group Fatah is secular, has been negotiating with Israel for decades, and thanks to the Oslo Accords of 1993, it managed to create the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), which has limited control over some sectors of the West Bank territory.
Israel has built dozens of settlements throughout the West Bank, which have over 500,000 residents, despite the international community’s questioning of their legality.