Oct 30 2009
Will elections help or hurt Palestinian reconciliation?
By Daoud Kuttab
The decree issued by Mahmoud Abbass, the president of the Palestinian Authority, has pushed the conflict between PLO’s main faction, Fateh, and the Islamic Hamas movement to yet another stage. While many consider this move very risky for the future of Palestine, others feel that it is the only democratic way out of the impasse.
It has been known for a long time that October 25 was the constitutional deadline for the current Palestinian Authority’s legitimacy as an elected body. The Palestinian Basic Law, a sort of interim constitution, clearly calls for simultaneous presidential and parliamentary elections. The unexpected death of Yasser Arafat and the untimely presidential elections 60 days after that, as per the Basic Law, created a problem in that in order to hold presidential and parliamentary elections at the same time, one of two things was needed. Either the parliamentary elections would be held before the end of the regular term or the presidential elections would be delayed.
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