RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories — Voters cast ballots Saturday in towns and
cities of the Israeli-occupied
West Bank in a rare democratic exercise
following a decade and a half of delays to Palestinian elections.
اضافة اعلان
It is the second
phase of municipal elections after a first round of voting in December in 154
West Bank villages.
Saturday’s vote
is being held in 50 towns and cities, with many elections uncontested, or
without any candidates in some cases.
Wasfi Ramhi,
voting in the city of
Al-Bireh, said he hoped it would lead to national
elections.
“If they are
democratic, fair, and free, they will help us to hold legislative and
presidential elections,” he told AFP.
No legislative
or presidential elections have been held in the Palestinian territories for 15
years, following repeated delays.
The last
municipal elections, held in 2017, were boycotted by Hamas.
Hamas is also
boycotting this vote in protest at President
Mahmoud Abbas’s indefinite
postponement of parliamentary and presidential elections that had been
scheduled for last year.
The Islamists
had been poised to sweep the parliamentary election, which was widely seen as
the real reason for Abbas’s 11th-hour postponement of the poll, citing Israel’s
refusal to allow voting in annexed East Jerusalem.
Abbas’s
presidential term was supposed to end in 2009.
Central Elections Commission chief Hanna Nasser said a number of candidates had been
arrested in the lead-up to the vote.
“There are
candidates who were arrested before today,” Nasser said. “This indicates
blatant interference in the election process.”
“The arrests
were made for political reasons to prevent certain candidates from running in
the elections,” he told a news conference.
No elections are
being held in Gaza or Israeli-annexed
East Jerusalem.
In the Jordan
Valley city of Jericho, independents dominate the candidate lists, with
established parties officially staying away, a dynamic mirrored across the West
Bank.
“Usually there
are just one or two lists running — and they belong to the parties. This time
there are five lists, many of them independents,” said Emad Barahmeh, a
businessman who heads one of the independent lists running in Jericho.
Yet experts say
Hamas and Fatah, the secular party led by Abbas, are still involved, running
candidates under the table as independents.
“It is also
noticeable that the various Palestinian factions are clearly absent from
running for these elections, but their candidates have entered under the name
of independents,” Talab Awad, an expert on Palestinian elections, told AFP.
“There are
candidates from the
Hamas movement in these elections, but they are doing so
personally,” Awad said, adding participation would likely be “high”.
The businessman
Barahmeh said the delayed legislative elections had left people “disappointed”
and Saturday’s vote was “like a small piece of freedom for them”.
Hamas and Fatah
have been at loggerheads since 2007 when the Islamists seized
Gaza after a week
of deadly clashes.
Today, the
Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority has control over parts of the occupied
West Bank, where 2.9 million Palestinians live, while the Gaza Strip, an
enclave of 2.3 million inhabitants under Israeli blockade, remains under Hamas
control.
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