Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced on Friday that parliamentary and presidential elections will be held in the country for the first time in 15 years.
Abbas said in a decree that the parliamentary elections would take place on May 22, and the presidential race would take place on July 31 in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.
It will be the first such vote since 2006, when the Hamas militant group won a resounding victory and sparked a clash with Abbas’s Fatah Party, pushing the Palestinian Authority (PA) into a political crisis. Hamas later took control of the Gaza Strip in a bloody battle.
Abbas won the presidency for the first time in the 2005 elections to determine the successor to the late Yasser Arafat.
While Fatah and Hamas have vowed to hold elections for more than a decade, they have failed to remedy that division, and it is still far from certain that the votes will actually be cast by the end of this year. Last week, Hamas informed Abbas that it would agree to run in the reconciliation efforts.
Hamas said in a statement on Friday that it “expressed a strong desire to make this obligation a success,” according to The Associated Press.
“We have been working over the last few months to overcome all obstacles to reach this day and we have shown a lot of flexibility,” a statement said. He also called for dialogue before the vote.
The election could pose massive dangers to both sides, given growing dissatisfaction with a worsening coronavirus pandemic, a lack of progress on the impetus for statehood, poverty and more.
However, it seems that Abbas could be in particularly abrupt political danger; The 85-year-old leader has been plagued by health problems and is particularly unpopular and may have lost to a Hamas candidate.
PA Abbas was ousted during the Trump administration, which took a number of Israeli-backed actions, including moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and closing the PA’s diplomatic mission in Washington. However, if the election passes, it could have massive implications for both Israel and the United States
If Abbas loses to a Hamas candidate, it would raise significant issues regarding the governance of the West Bank. It would be virtually impossible for a candidate from the militant group, recognized as a terrorist group by Israel and many Western nations, to take control of the West Bank, over which Jerusalem maintains general control of security.
The West Bank’s Abbas government is coordinating with Israel on security issues, but Hamas has been waging three wars with the Israeli army since taking over the Gaza Strip.
A Hamas victory could also throw a major key in the car of the president-elect Joe Biden
Joe Biden The confirmation hearing for Biden’s DNI election has postponed Sunday’s rehearsal of Biden’s postponement for security reasons: the Murkowski report says it would be “appropriate” to ban Trump from taking office again.The plan is to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and restore Palestinian assistance, given that Washington considers Hamas a terrorist group.
However, it is still uncertain that the votes will actually be cast later this year, given the inability to hold elections in recent years. It is also possible that Israel will block the vote in East Jerusalem, which could jeopardize the elections.