Abbas: Parliamentary vote still on
Palestinian Chairman Mahmoud Abbas denies his government will postpone crucial parliamentary election, a move Hamas said would have been cause to break truce with Israel
Palestinian Chairman Mahmoud Abbas denied reports that a parliamentary election would be postponed because of a rise in the power of Hamas and a rift within his Fatah faction as Palestinian sources said earlier, a move that leaders of the terrorist group said would lead them to break a de facto cease-fire with Israel.
"No one now in the authority or otherwise is thinking of postponement," Abbas said, adding that the vote would be held after necessary amendments to the election law.
Palestinian sources said earlier that the Palestinian Legislative Council, one of the government’s top decision-making bodies, would not convene to discuss the date of the vote for its lawmakers, originally scheduled for July 17, and would therefore need to set a later date, after Israel's withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza this summer.
The sources said the ballot, the first contended by Hamas, was likely to be postponed because of the group’s boost in support among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, especially since the start of a four-year-old Palestinian uprising, as well as growing rivalry among members of Fatah.
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said pushing back the election could force his group to abandon a de facto truce it and other terrorist groups declared in March. They had said they would maintain the cease-fire until the end of 2005 at the most.
But the Islamic faction, which is sworn to the destruction of the Jewish state and has killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings, threatened to break the truce early after Israeli troops killed three Palestinians in Gaza on April 9 who they said had tried to smuggle in weapons from Egypt.
