Palestinian officials announced Friday that the presidential and parliamentary elections, which were originally scheduled to be conducted across the Palestine territories in January, have been postponed.
Without providing further details, the officials said that a new date will be set for the elections, which were originally scheduled to take place on 24th January.
The announcement came just a day after Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said in a interview that the elections scheduled for January will be postponed to a later date. Abbas said in the interview that Palestinian leaders would now take the necessary steps to avoid a constitutional vacuum when the term of the current legislature and his term as president expire on Jan. 25.
Abbas also stressed that he will nor run for a second term in office, reflecting his frustration over Israel's failure to halt the expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied West bank and East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians hope to make their future capital.
Abbas also accuses the United States of failing in its efforts to persuade Israel to halt its settlement activities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, a pre-condition kept by the Palestinians and Arab states for the resumption of the stalled Middle East peace process.
It is understood that Abbas was extremely disappointed when U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said during a recent visit to Israel that the Jewish country was making "unprecedented" concessions to the Palestinians by offering to freeze the new housing projects in the occupied Palestinian territory for a limited time.
Though Clinton clarified later that Washington still considers any sort of Israeli settlement activity in the occupied Palestinian territories as "illegitimate," she urged Palestinians to resume negotiations with Israel without insisting on a total settlement freeze. Many Palestinians believe that her statements signaled the collapse of their main precondition for resuming peace talks with Israel.
Last week, Palestine's Election Commission had recommended delaying the elections over opposition from Hamas, a radical Islamic group that controls Gaza. The group had warned that it would not allow Palestinians in Gaza to vote as Abbas' Fatah faction that controls only the West Bank set the date for the elections without consulting Hamas leaders.
Last month, Abbas had announced that presidential and parliamentary elections would be held across the Palestinian territories in January. A statement released by his office said that Abbas has "invited the Palestinian people in Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to take part in free and direct presidential and legislative elections on Sunday January 24, 2010."
Abbas' move to set the date for Palestine elections was widely seen as a ploy to pressurize Hamas, a rival group that controls the Gaza Strip, to sign an Egyptian-brokered reconciliation agreement. Abbas' Fatah faction has already approved the Egyptian-proposed deal, but Hamas is yet to approve it. The group says that it requires more time to study the deal.
However, Hamas had rejected Abbas' election call as illegal, warning that holding general elections in the Palestinian territories before the rival factions reach a reconciliation agreement would adversely affect the ongoing Egyptian-mediated reconciliation efforts.
Egypt had proposed the deal for Palestinian reconciliation after the failure of several previous rounds of Egyptian-brokered talks aimed at reaching an agreement on the formation of a national unity government in Palestine territories, which would then pave the way for holding legislative and presidential elections early next year.
Previously, several rounds of Egyptian-mediated reconciliation talks between Palestinians factions had ended without a deal after the rival Fatah and Hamas factions failed to agree on power sharing and whether the new unity government would honor previous peace deals signed between Israel and the PLO.
Relations between the two rival factions deteriorated after Hamas, a radical Islamist group, came to power in the Gaza Strip, winning the parliamentary election in January 2006. The Islamist group formed a government that March, but Israel and the West boycotted it over the group's refusal to recognize Israel, renounce violence and honor past peace agreements.
Though Fatah and Hamas managed to form a unity government under Saudi mediation in March 2007, it was short lived as Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip forcefully in June after its forces routed Fatah loyalists in a civil war.
Since then, the moderate Fatah faction that backs negotiations with Israel has ruled the West Bank, while the radical Hamas group that believes in armed struggle for liberating Palestine and refuses to recognize Israel governs the Gaza Strip.
The two main Palestinian rival groups accuse each other of carrying out political arrests in Gaza and the West Bank. The disputes between the two sides had crippled previous Egyptian efforts to broker a deal to restore political unity in Palestine and to boost the prospects for resuming the stalled peace-talks with Israel.
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