 Palestinian election authorities cleared the way on Monday for the ruling Fatah movement to merge rival lists of candidates for a January parliamentary ballot, thus ending a damaging split.
| I think we guessed that would happen... |
Rivals in Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' ruling movement had presented two candidate lists, then decided they wanted to merge them into one as a way to counter a challenge from surging rival Hamas.
 The ruling of the electoral court was needed because the official deadline for registering candidates was December 14. After an appeal, the court said it would reopen registration for a further six hours. It was not immediately clear when the six hours would begin. The justification was that operations were suspended for six hours by the elections commission during the registration process to protest attacks by gunmen on its offices. The gunmen were from Fatah. |