'No elections if Hamas will win'

Saleh Al-Naami, Al-Ahram Weekly, 30-5/08/07. PLO elections are not in the cards, and neither are general Palestinian legislative and presidential elections, the main problem being that the West Bank is still under Israeli occupation and Gaza remains effectively under Israeli siege, so that Israeli approval and cooperation would be required in order to ensure that the balloting process proceeds with any degree of smoothness. Israeli Interior Minister Avi Dichter was very clear on this point. On Friday he told Israeli army radio, "we will not approve of the elections until we can be sure that Hamas won't win."

Recent opinion polls gave them the warning signal. A poll appearing in Al-Quds, a Fatah mouthpiece funded by the Palestinian office of the presidency, indicated that Ismail Haniyeh would come out miles ahead of any other presidential candidate. According to the poll, if elections were held now, 51.38 per cent of the electorate would elect him, whereas only 13.37 per cent would vote for Abu Mazen, 12.62 per cent for Fatah leader Marawan Barghouti and a mere 4.99 per cent for Salam Fayyad, head of the current emergency government.

So, as the situation stands, there appears to be a general unanimity among all parties concerned, each for their own very separate and different reasons, over the impossibility of holding elections in Palestine at this time.

full text