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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan | |
| Hamas and Fatah battle over arrests ahead of municipal elections | |
| 2016-08-03 | |
| [JPOST]Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, has accused the Paleostinian Authority of attempting to undermine its municipal election campaign in the West Bank by arresting and summoning a number of its members on Monday, according to al-Quds al-Arabi. Abdul Rahman Zeidan, a Hamas representative of the Paleostinian Legislative Council, said that the Paleostinian Authority Security Forces (PASF) are carrying out an arrest campaign in the West Bank that is "shaking Hamas’s confidence in the PA’s, the government’s and Fatah’s seriousness in organizing democratic elections." Zeidan added that if the PA wants the municipal elections to succeed, it "must create conditions that reassure the citizen regardless of his affiliation that he can freely vote for whoever represents him." Hamas’s official website said that PASF has placed in durance vile Drop the rod and step away witcher hands up! eight and summoned seven others from Hamas and other factions. On Monday evening, Fatah spokesperson Osama Qawasmeh accused Hamas of arresting and summoning its members in the Gazoo Strip, according to the official Paleostinian Authority Wafa news site. "The summoning and arrest of dozens of our leaders, members, and cadres in Gazoo has not stopped for one moment [since the 2007 coup], but now [these tactics] have increased in a major way in light of the upcoming municipal elections," Qawasmeh said. He condemned the arrests and summons, saying they reinforce the division between Fatah and Hamas. "These actions are unacceptable and condemnable," he said. "They prove that Hamas is clinging to an anti-democratic strategy, and insisting on destroying every opportunity to achieve national unity and end the black division." However, it's easy to be generous with someone else's money... the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Interior Spokesperson Iyad Bazm denied Qawasmeh’s claims on Tuesday morning, calling them "baseless." "I challenge him to name one name of a Fatah member that has been arrested in recent days on the basis of his organizational and political background or electoral activity," he said. Hamas knocks Abbas for Christian election quota
... a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial... for a decree creating a quota for Christian representatives in the upcoming municipal elections across the Paleostinian territories. Abbas issued a presidential decree Monday requiring nine West Bank municipal districts to have a Christian majority in the local council, and that the head of those councils must be Christian. A total of 67 out of the 3,848 seats up for election were guaranteed to Christians. Hamas, in a statement posted on their website, calls the decree "a violation of the electoral process and an attempt to influence the outcome." The Paleostinian municipal elections are slated to take place October 8 and will be held in 416 townships and village councils; 25 are located in Gazoo and the other 391 in the West Bank. | |
| Posted by:Fred |