Abbas faces pressure over whether to postpone long-delayed Palestinian elections

Questions are mounting over whether Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will again postpone Palestinian Legislative Council elections, or whether the long-delayed vote will finally take place, bringing an end to the council’s 16-year-old expired mandate, according to expert analysts and reports in Arab diaspora media
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Yoni Ben Menachem, a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, wrote earlier this week that senior Fatah officials were under the impression that Abbas would be likely to postpone the election again, over concerns that Mohammed Dahlan’s camp would be handed significant political control.

Officials told Menachem that Hussein al-Sheikh, deputy chairman of the PA, was pushing Abbas to postpone, and use the justification that the Central Elections Commission cannot hold elections in the Gaza Strip or in east Jerusalem.

Despite this apparent justification for postponing the elections, European officials have begun pushing to see some type of mission to see the election carried through. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot is reportedly going to ask the European Union to send a collective to monitor Palestinian elections scheduled for November, according to The National.

Abbas had vowed last year to finally carry out elections as part of a deal with France and 10 other countries to recognize a Palestinian state.

Dahlan had talks with Hamas in Cairo last month, and The Jerusalem Post confirmed earlier this week that Dahlan was seeking to unify Palestinian factions, including Hamas. Menachem noted that this development could give Hamas and its allies the opportunity to seize significant political power, or even for a Dahlan-Hamas camp to create a new center of power outside Abbas’s control.

Menachem: PLC elections could allow for PA leadership referendum 

Menachem also noted that the PLC elections could allow for a referendum on the PA and its leadership, which have frequently polled as unpopular among the Palestinian public and are widely regarded as corrupt.

Abbas could also use the time during the postponement to make internal arrangements within his divided faction before Palestinians ever have the opportunity to vote. Senior PA officials told Menachem that internal reconciliation within Fatah is the real test.

Fatah officials meet to mend party rift 

Fatah officials Sheikh and Jibril Rajoub, who have repeatedly come to blows, met last weekend as part of efforts to mend the rift, according to Arab media reports. These efforts are also reportedly being pushed along by a number of Arab states, who fear that a weakened PA would threaten the political framework needed to address a post-war period.

Adding to the pressure to hold the election as planned, Menachem noted that the ongoing PA legitimacy crisis would make any postponement appear as if Fatah fears the election’s verdict.