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Palestinian Fatah candidates hold their hands together to greet supporters, during a Fatah party election rally in Gaza City, Friday. (AP)
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| By Associated Press January 9, 2006 |
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Jerusalem police said Monday that politicians running in Jan. 25 Palestinian parliamentary elections would be allowed to campaign in Jerusalem, reversing a previous Israeli ban on Palestinian political activity in the city which both sides claim for their capital.
Senior Palestinian politician Hatem Abdel Khader saw the decision on campaigning as an indication Israel would permit east Jerusalem residents to participate in the voting, a Palestinian demand.
"They informed me that there is a political decision to allow us as candidates in the upcoming election to conduct our election campaign in Jerusalem," he said. "I consider this to be a progress in the Israeli position."
Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby told The Associated Press, "We have received permission from the government to allow the Palestinians to campaign in Jerusalem."
Public Security Minister Gideon Ezra told Israel Radio that the armed Islamic Hamas group, which has carried out dozens of deadly suicide bombings and whose participation in the election Israel opposes. would not be allowed to campaign.
"Each (candidate) who wants to campaign in east Jerusalem must get police permission," Ezra said.
Ezra did not say whether Jerusalem's 200,000 Palestinians would also be permitted to vote in the city. That decision is likely to be the first political test of former Jerusalem mayor Ehud Olmert, who became acting prime minister last week when Ariel Sharon was incapacitated by a stroke.
The Palestinians claim east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, as the capital of their future state but Israel says the entire city is its capital, and police have repeatedly broken up Palestinian political gatherings, saying they are forbidden under interim peace accords.
Sharon's stroke and the Israeli political upheaval stemming from it should not be used as a pretext for delaying the Palestinian election, said jailed Palestinian uprising leader Marwan Barghouti, a leading candidate.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas is under increasing pressure from members of his Fatah party - worried about a strong challenge from the Islamic Hamas - to postpone the election.
Barghouti, the leading candidate on the ruling Fatah Party's list, said in a statement issued from an Israeli prison that the elections are "a political, legal and national process that should not be subject to external effects."
"There should not be a link between holding the elections and the developments in Israel arising from the deterioration of Sharon's health," Barghouti said in the statement, which was published Saturday. He is serving five life terms for involvement in deadly Palestinian attacks against Israelis.
Fatah has dominated Palestinian politics for more than four decades, but voters are angry about government corruption and lawlessness on Palestinian streets, and Hamas is poised to benefit.
Abbas said the elections will go ahead as planned unless Israel refuses to allow Palestinians in disputed east Jerusalem to vote.
In a previous compromise, Palestinians voted in east Jerusalem by casting absentee ballots in Israeli post offices. But because of the participation of Hamas, which calls for the destruction of Israel, Israeli officials have so far not announced agreement to allow such a procedure this time. Hamas rejects the presence of a Jewish state in the Mideast and has carried out dozens of suicide bombings, killing hundreds of Israelis.
Barghouti said Fatah demands the right to vote in Jerusalem and called on Palestinians in the city to turn up and vote on election day to "reassert the Arab identity of the city, and to deny the rulers in Tel Aviv the chance to steal the city."
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