RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories — Hundreds of Palestinian lawyers held a rare street
protest Monday against what they described as the Palestinian Authority’s (PA)
“rule by decree”, condemning President Mahmoud Abbas for governing without a
parliament.
اضافة اعلان
The
Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) has been inactive since 2007, meaning Abbas has led
without a functioning parliament for nearly all of his tenure as president.
But a new
leadership at the Palestinian Bar Association has sought to pressure the PA.
The association’s
president, Suheil Ashour, told AFP at the protest that his body would stand
firm against legislation delivered by a presidential decree that curbed
Palestinian “rights and freedoms”.
“Our demand is
either to stop their implementation now or to cancel” a raft of restrictive
laws, said Ashour, who pushed for reforms when he was elected association
president earlier this year.
The draft
Palestinian constitution allows for presidential decrees “if necessary”, in
cases where the PLC cannot act, but lawyers said Abbas has gone too far.
Riot police
prevented the demonstrators, clad in their black robes, from marching to the
nearby office of Prime Minister
Mohammad Shtayyeh.
Farhan Abu Aisha, a
protester, accused Abbas of making decisions “under the cover of darkness”.
“The legislative
authority is absent in Palestine, and the judicial authority is completely
marginalized,” he said.
Abbas was elected Palestinian president in 2005,
following the death of iconic leader Yasser Arafat.
Hamas Islamists,
bitter rivals of Abbas’s secular
Fatah movement, swept to victory in the 2006
Palestinian legislative elections.
Fallout from that
vote helped spark a split in Palestinian governance, with Fatah retaining
control of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Hamas running Gaza since 2007.
According to
estimates by Palestinian legal experts, Abbas has issued some 400 presidential
decrees while in office.
He officially
dissolved the PLC in 2018 and moves to hold new elections have faced pushback.
Abbas had set dates
for presidential and legislative elections to be held last year across the
Palestinian territories, with Hamas’s participation, but canceled the polls
citing Israel’s refusal to allow voting in annexed east Jerusalem.
Public demonstrations against Abbas and the PA have been on
the rise in the West Bank, notably following the death in Palestinian custody
of activist and Abbas critic Nizar Banat last year. The top Palestinian
prosecutor has accused 14 security force members of beating Banat to death.
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