Palestinian electoral body postpones Jan. polls

The Palestinian electoral commission on Thursday indefinitely postponed general elections called for January because the vote cannot take place in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

"I regret to say it is unfortunate that the elections will be postponed," commission head Hanna Nasser told reporters.

"It has become clear to us that conducting elections in the Gaza Strip is not likely to happen," he said.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas received a recommendation to postpone the January vote and will accept the advice, a senior official earlier said.

Unconstitutional

Abbas had called for presidential and parliamentary elections to be held on Jan. 24, when the four-year mandate of the current Hamas-dominated parliament runs out.

But Hamas Islamist group, which has controlled Gaza since June 2007, blasted the president's decree as unconstitutional because his own mandate ran out in January.

Hamas ruling some 1.5 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip had warned it would not allow them to vote.

Abbas has said that he would not stand for re-election because of what aides said was his frustration with the inability by the U.S. to get Israel to freeze settlements in order to resume peace negotiations.

The bitter rift between Fatah and Hamas goes back to the start of limited Palestinian self-rule in the 1990s, when strongmen of the secular Fatah cracked down on the Islamist militant group.

Tensions jumped during the last parliamentary elections in January 2006 when Hamas, running for the first time in a national ballot, unexpectedly routed the long-dominant Fatah.

Hamas grabbed 74 seats in the 132-member parliament, leaving Fatah with 45.

Simmering divisions boiled over in June 2007 when Hamas fighters expelled Abbas loyalists from Gaza in a week of bloody clashes, seizing control of the impoverished and densely populated territory.

Postponement will avoid an election that was destined to cause a permanent split in the deeply divided Palestinian movement, as well as delaying the moment at which Abbas has suggested he might choose to withdraw from the presidency.

I regret to say it is unfortunate that the elections will be postponed. It has become clear to us that conducting elections in the Gaza Strip is not likely to happen

Hanna Nasser, Palestinian electoral commission

Fatah-Hamas rift

Abbas had set the election date after Hamas refused to sign a reconciliation proposal drawn up by Egypt after more than a year of frustrating mediation between the two hostile Palestinian factions.

The pact would have scheduled the elections for June 2010.

Abbas has said on several occasions he would be ready to postpone the vote if Hamas changed its mind and agreed to the reconciliation pact.

So far there is no sign the Islamist group intends to accept what Abbas on Wednesday repeated was the offer of his hand in friendship. A Hamas spokesman responded immediately to the gesture, dismissing it as a "maneuver."

Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri expressed no surprise at the postponement.

"This is a natural result because of the lack of appropriate conditions and it is evidence of the credibility of Hamas' position, which rejected the call for elections before a national consensus was reached," he said.

Addressing a rally in Ramallah on Wednesday to mark the fifth anniversary of the death of his predecessor Yasser Arafat, Abbas said that for peace talks to resume, Israel must recognize the terms of reference.

"We cannot go to negotiations without a framework. And we say the framework is U.N. resolutions, meaning a return to the 1967 borders," Abbas said, referring to Israel's borders on the eve of the conflict that changed the map of the Middle East.

Israeli, Arab and European leaders appealed to Abbas to reconsider, since he is viewed as their main partner for peace in any future negotiations.

An open-ended postponement of the elections would require the endorsement of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which Abbas heads. The PLO has the power to extend his term indefinitely.