Hamas Rejects Plan by Abbas To Call Elections

Early Vote Would Include Presidency

RAMALLAH, West Bank, Dec. 16 -- Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announced Saturday that he has decided to call early elections, including for his own office, to end a political crisis in the Palestinian territories that has brought a surge in deadly factional violence over the past week.

"We shall not continue this vicious circle," Abbas told a friendly crowd of about 500 legislators, religious leaders and supporters gathered at the Muqata government compound here for a national address. "Let us go back to the people and let them have their say."

Abbas's decision drew a defiant response from Hamas officials, who said the party would not accept a new election less than halfway into its four-year parliamentary term and challenged the president's right to call an early vote. The dispute comes as Palestinian leaders express growing concern over the spate of partisan reprisal killings in the territories, which officials recently warned resemble the start of civil war.

"If the president is willing to go to early elections, he can resign and enter an early presidential election," said Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman in the Gaza Strip. "But for us, we were elected by the Palestinians, and we are not willing to go through with this experiment. The president's call is illegitimate."

Abbas is a cautious politician by nature, and his announcement came at a time of increasing pressure from within his Fatah movement to resolve the nearly year-long political standoff with Hamas, whose victory in January parliamentary elections ended his party's long monopoly on power.

It was unclear, however, whether he will follow through with his decision, which would lead to general elections around the middle of next year that his deeply divided Fatah party is by no means assured of winning. A Fatah loss of the presidency and parliament would leave the government entirely in the hands of Hamas, a radical Islamic movement considered a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel.

Abbas did not set a date for the vote. He finished his speech by emphasizing that a national unity government remains his "first choice" to reduce alarming partisan tensions and end the economic sanctions that have crippled the Palestinian Authority since Hamas took power.

In that sense, the announcement was designed to increase pressure on Hamas to renew unity government talks that deadlocked in recent weeks, some analysts and lawmakers said. But Abbas's advisers said he would sign a decree ordering a new vote after meeting in coming days with the Central Elections Commission.

The earliest the vote could be held would be next summer, his aides said, adding that they were not sure whether Abbas would seek reelection.

"It's not just a matter of calling elections, you also have to win them," said Mustafa Barghouti, a lawmaker from the Independent Palestine party who has been serving as a mediator between Hamas and Fatah. "If they were to hold elections tomorrow, I'm fairly certain the results would not be much different."

In the Syrian capital of Damascus, Hamas's political leader in exile, Khaled Mashal, was joined by Farouk Kaddoumi, the Fatah general secretary, in denouncing Abbas's decision as illegal.

Palestinian law is unclear on whether the president is allowed to call early parliamentary elections, although it does give him the right to fire the prime minister. Advisers to Abbas argue that because the law does not explicitly prohibit him from ordering an early vote, he has the right to do so.