PLO meeting to extend Abbas term until elections

Ramallah: The Palestine Liberation Organization’s mini-parliament meeting Tuesday in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah will extend the terms of President Mahmoud Abbas and parliament

This will be until elections are held to avoid a legal and political vacuum when their tenure ends in January and in the absence of an agreement over a new vote.

Some 129 members of the Palestine Central Council (PCC), the highest policy and legislative PLO body, met in Ramallah to decide the fate of the Palestinian Authority’s institutions which would would lose legitimacy in January of new elections are not held.

Abbas called for presidential and parliamentary elections on January 24, but Hamas’ ban on holding elections in Gaza led to the postponement of the vote.

The four-year term of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), elected in 2006 and dominated by Hamas ends in January. Abbas’ term also ends in January. An agreement between Hamas and the PLO is required for elections to be held. Abbas believes that elections are the only way to end the division between his own Fatah movement and Islamist Hamas which violently took over Gaza in mid-June 2007.

A decision drafted and approved by a committee made up of members of the PLO’s Executive Committee and representatives of the PLO factions stated that Abbas would stay in office beyond January 24, 2010 date, the date Abbas set for new parliamentary and presidential elections.

The draft decision also states that all Palestinian Authority institutions, including the PLC, would continue to function until the next election. The PCC members call for holding elections no later than July 1, in line with an Egyptian proposal to delay the January elections to June 28.

Fatah Central Committee member Mohammad Dahlan said the PCC’s draft resolution stated that the PCC decides that “brother President Abu Mazen and all the institutions of the Palestinian National Authority will continue their work and shoulder their responsibility…until elections are held.”

“Elections are to be held by July 1, based on the Egyptian paper’s proposal that elections would be held on June 28, ” Dahlan told Gulf News. He said that the decision did not use the word “extension” but “continuation” to avoid legal interpretations and disputes.

Some PLO officials had suggested the PCC dissolve the PLC, but the idea was rejected by the majority of the PLO factions due to avoid legal entanglements and unconstitutional moves.

The work of the Palestinian Legisaltive Council has been paralyzed since 2007 when many of its Islamist members were arrested by Israel and after Hamas seized Gaza Strip.

Hamas officials say elections cannot solve the ideological and political problems that exist with Fatah and which led to its takeover of Gaza and have called for new meetings with Fatah to discuss the disputes.

Hamas, which is not a member of the PLO,  refuses to recognize the PCC’s powers to extend the terms of Abbas and the PLC and rejects Abbas’ legitimacy. It says the PCC decisions would deepen the division.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, prime minister of the Hamas dismissed government in Gaza, criticized the PCC meeting and its decisions.

Addressing PCC members meeting in Ramallah, Haniyeh said on Monday “any decision that contradicts the constitution and contradicts the will of the people, will not be binding.”

PLO officials said the PCC created the Palestinian Authority and its institutions in 1993 following the signing of the Oslo interim peace deals with Israel as an interim body integrated within the PLO to run the affairs of the Palestinians inside the occupied territories until a Palestinian state was established. They say the PLO has powers to dissolve the Palestinian Authority or decide the continuation of its institutions.

The PLO hopes that delaying the election date to end of June would give Hamas time to sign an Egyptian reconciliation document that outlines steps to end the division between the PLO and Hamas and prepare for elections.

Abbas has repeatedly said elections were the only way to end the split that has damaged the Palestinian cause and undermined efforts to establish Palestinian statehood.

Egypt has been engaged over the past year in mediation efforts between Abbas’ secular Fatah faction which hold sway in the West Bank and Hamas which has violently taken over Gaza Strip in mid-June 2007.

Fatah signed the Egyptian unity document but Hamas has refused to sign, demanding amendments and assurances for implementation. Egypt, applying pressure on Hamas,  has refused to amend its compromise document, insisting its contents were a culmination of agreements reached between Hamas and Fatah.

Abbas, frustrated with failed efforts to end the split with Hamas and disappointed with US President Barack Obama’s failure to convince Israel to totally halt Jewish settlement construction on occupied Palestinian land ahead of final status talks, announced he would not seek a new term and has threatened in private meetings with his Fatah faction to resign.

Fatah and the international community fear that Abbas’ resignation before elections are held would create a vacuum that could be filled by Hamas, a move that would hamper peace efforts and pave the way for a Hamas takeover of the West Bank.

Wafa Amr is a Palestinian journalist based in Ramallah.