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

Mahmoud Abbas is under pressure to decide whether Palestinian Legislative Council elections will finally take place or be postponed again. The council has operated for 16 years beyond its expired mandate.

Yoni Ben Menachem of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs wrote that senior Fatah officials believe Abbas is likely to delay the vote because Mohammed Dahlan’s camp could gain substantial political control. Officials told him that Hussein al-Sheikh, the Palestinian Authority’s deputy chairman, was urging Abbas to postpone the election and cite the inability of the Central Elections Commission to organize voting in Gaza and east Jerusalem.

European officials, however, are pushing for the vote to proceed. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot is reportedly expected to ask the European Union to send a joint mission to monitor elections scheduled for November. Abbas pledged last year to hold elections as part of an agreement with France and 10 other countries that recognized a Palestinian state.

Dahlan held talks with Hamas in Cairo last month and has been seeking to unify Palestinian factions, according to the report. Ben Menachem warned that this could give Hamas and its allies substantial political influence, or allow a Dahlan-Hamas alliance to form a new power center outside Abbas’s control.

The elections could also become a referendum on the Palestinian Authority and its leadership, which polling has often found unpopular and which many Palestinians regard as corrupt. Delaying the vote could give Abbas time to manage divisions within Fatah. Sheikh and Jibril Rajoub, two officials who have repeatedly clashed, met last weekend in an effort to repair their party’s rift, with several Arab states reportedly encouraging reconciliation.