Palestinian Authority calls election

Reuters, RAMALLAH, West Bank | Sat Feb 12, 2011

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (C) attends a Palestinian Liberation
Organization (PLO) executive committee meeting in the West Bank city of
Ramallah January 26, 2011. (Credit: Reuters/Mohamad Torokman)

(Reuters) - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called on Saturday for elections before September, but rival Islamist group Hamas quickly rejected the move, underscoring a crippling division among Palestinians.

"The Palestinian leadership decided to hold presidential and legislative elections before September," senior Abbas aide Yasser Abed Rabbo told reporters.

"It urges all the sides to put their differences aside," he said, referring to a bitter rivalry between Abbas's West Bank-based government and Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said the Western-backed Abbas, who has served as president since 2005, lacks the legitimacy to make such a call.

"Hamas will not take part in this election. We will not give it legitimacy. And we will not recognize the results," Barhoum said.

Previous ballots were canceled with the groups unable to reach a reconciliation deal.

Abbed Rabbo said the rivals would be able to resolve their differences in a new legislative council to be formed after the presidential and parliamentary elections.

Hamas won the last parliamentary election in 2006 and a year later routed Abbas's forces to seize control of the Gaza Strip.

Hamas's opposition to Abbas's peace moves with Israel is one of the issues keeping the factions apart.

U.S.-sponsored peace negotiations between Palestinian and Israeli teams have faltered since being relaunched last year.

Abed Rabbo said that Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator in the recent round of talks, has tendered his resignation, but Abbas has yet to accept it.

(Reporting by Ali Sawafta in Ramallah and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; Editing by Jon Hemming)

Related Article:

"The End of History" – Nov 20, 2010 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll)
(Subjects:Abraham, Isaac, Ishmael, Muhammad, Jesus, God, Jews, Arabs, EU, US, Israel, Iran, Russia, Africa, South America, Global Unity,..... etc.) (Text version)

"If an Arab and a Jew can look at one another and see the Akashic lineage and see the one family, there is hope. If they can see that their differences no longer require that they kill one another, then there is a beginning of a change in history. And that's what is happening now. All of humanity, no matter what the spiritual belief, has been guilty of falling into the historic trap of separating instead of unifying. Now it's starting to change. There's a shift happening."

(Live Kryon Channelings was given 7 times within the United Nations building.)