Abbas Plans New Palestinian Elections

Former Education Minister in the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority Nasser Shaer, right, is greeted by his daughter Arwa after being released from an Israeli jail and arriving at his home in the West Bank city of Nablus, Tuesday, July 17, 2007. The Israeli army announced that Shaer had been held under administrative detention - imprisonment without trial - and was released upon agreement that he would sign a statement renouncing his membership in Hamas and declaring he would not hold positions in the Palestinian Authority for Hamas or any other illegal organization. (AP Photo/Nasser Ishtayeh) (Nasser Ishtayeh - AP)

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Eighteen months after his Fatah movement was trounced at the polls, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Wednesday that he will call new legislative elections in a move seen as seeking to further isolate the Islamic militants of Hamas.

Hamas said early elections would be illegal and warned they could lead to new violence.

Abbas' aides said they expected the ballot by the end of this year or early 2008. His announcement came as the U.S. and other international mediators were moving to revive Mideast peace efforts.

In a speech to the Palestine Central Council, Abbas denounced Hamas in the harshest terms, accusing the Islamic movement of staging "a coup" against him in the Gaza Strip and of provoking Israel and Egypt to seal Gaza's borders.

Hamas is "committing capital crimes, bloody crimes against our people every day, every minute, every hour," Abbas said. "There will be no dialogue until they return Gaza to what it was before."

"Even the devil cannot match their lies," he added.

In five days of bloody fighting in mid-June, Hamas militiamen crushed Fatah gunmen and the presidential security force in the Gaza Strip.

Abbas retaliated by dismissing the Hamas-led coalition government formed after the January 2006 elections and created a caretaker government of technocrats and moderates that governs the West Bank but holds little sway in Gaza.

"We will call on the council to decide on early elections," Abbas said. "We won't exclude anybody from having their say in a democratic way."

The council is a policy-making body of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the umbrella body for worldwide Palestinian groups. Hamas is not a member and rejects its authority.

In Gaza, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said neither Abbas nor the council is empowered to call elections. "It is not legitimate to issue such a recommendation," he said. "This council has expired and has no mandate and no authority."

Though Abbas said the election will be open to all Palestinians, Hamas said it would oppose the balloting, and it was hard to see how voting could be conducted in Gaza.