Abbas postpones Palestinian elections, blaming Israel over East Al-Quds impasse

Mahmoud Abbas announced early Friday that the first Palestinian elections in 15 years will be delayed, citing a dispute with Zionist regime to call off a vote in which his fractured Fatah party was expected to suffer another embarrassing defeat to the Hamas movement.

The announcement ends weeks of mounting speculation that Abbas would nix the vote and looks certain to trigger a blame game involving the international community, as well as widespread frustration among Palestinians, who were set to vote in popular elections for the first time in fifteen years.

Voting for the Palestinian Legislative Council was set to take place on May 22, with a vote for the Presidency scheduled for the end of July.

Speaking at a meeting of Palestinian factions in Ramallah on Thursday evening, Abbas said his decision to hold elections for the first time since 2006 had been an attempt to achieve national unity and end the division between the West Bank and Gaza.

But he said he had received a message earlier Thursday that Israel was unable to say whether it would allow voting to take place in East Al-Quds— seen as non-negotiable by Palestinians in the elections.

The reason given was Israel's own political deadlock, Abbas said, adding that he did not accept this. "It is not a technical issue but a national political issue," he told faction leaders.

The election will only be reinstated, Abbas said, when "the participation of our people in Jerusalem (Al-Quds) is guaranteed."

Under the terms of the Oslo Accords, signed by Israel and the PLO in the 1990s, Palestinians living in Gaza, the West Bank and East Al-Quds are entitled to vote in Palestinian Authority (PA) elections.

The issue of whether votes can actually be cast in East Al-Quds is a sensitive one, because Israel regards all of Al-Quds as its sovereign territory, while Palestinians see the eastern part of the city as the capital of a future Palestinian state.