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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Abbas calls for vote, Haniyeh wants emergency talks |
| 2011-03-16 |
| [Ma'an] President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas ... a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial. He was one of the founding members of Fatah. Since no one would talk to him anymore in the wake of the Karine A incident, Yasser Arafat appointed Abbas prime minister in 2003. Arafat then proceeded to pretend there was no such thing as a prime minister and Abbas resigned in frustration in October of the same year. Arafat keeled over dead from AIDS the next year, and Abbas ran in the presidential election in January 2005. Fatah managed to split down the middle between the Greedy Old Guard and the Young Bloodthirsty Guys for the legislative elections, which threw the whole thing to Hamäs. This resulted in a Government of National Unity™, which worked about as well as those things usually do, and Hamäs soon beat up Fatah's goons and threw them out of Gazoo. Recently Hamäs points out, accurately, that Abbas' term as president has expired, but refuses to allow any elections to take place, which prevents him from gracefully stepping down. This the sort of thing we usually expect in Paleostine... on Tuesday proposed holding elections "as soon as possible" in order to end the divide within the national movement. "I am with the people and in favor of going back to the people to put an end to the divisions through presidential and parliamentary elections," he said after talks with Cyprus President Demetris Christofias. Gazoo Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh's response to the protests was to invite Abbas for "immediate" talks to mend the bitter divide between their two movements. "I invite the president, brother Abu Mazen (Abbas), and Fatah to an immediate meeting here in Gazoo or in any location which we agree upon, to start national dialogue in order to achieve reconciliation," Haniyeh said in a live broadcast. Haniyeh blamed division on "external interference and the lack of political will of the Paleostinian leadership in the West Bank," he said Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, did "not want division," but was ready once again to talk with Fatah. As an estimated 300,000 protested in Gazoo City, and another 3,000 gathered in Ramallah, all demanding an end to the political division, appointed West Bank Prime Minister Salam Fayyad headed a meeting to discuss unity options. Fayyad is expected to propose a new PA cabinet to Abbas on Monday. Initial reports suggested that the cabinet could include Hamas members, but were never confirmed. The PA media office said Fayyad and the resigned PA cabinet held a meeting in Ramallah, where they welcomed protests "as a means of ending the occupation and achieving national readiness for statehood." The statement said the resigned cabinet urged young Paleostinians to direct efforts to the international community, and ask nations to apply international law to the situation in Paleostine. |
| Posted by:Fred |