Palestinians in 26 municipalities across the West Bank headed to the polls on Thursday as they get the chance to vote for their councillors for the first time in three decades.
| In a shocking coincidence, this comes on the heels of the death of Yasser Arafat. But the AFP reporter failed to notice that. |
More than 140,000 electors will choose from 886 candidates, including 139 women, as they select local council officials for the town of Jericho and 25 villages in the West Bank.
| They couldn't do this before Yasser croaked, because of the Zionist occupation, but now... ummm... uhhh... |
A second tranche of elections will take place on January 27 in 10 other localities in the Gaza Strip. They are the first elections for councillors to be held in the Palestinian territories since 1976. Although vote counting would finish three hours after the polls closed, the final results would not be officially announced until Saturday, local election commission spokesman Firas Yaghi told AFP. The elections will mark the first time the radical Islamist terrorist group Hamas has participated in the Palestinian democratic process and will serve as a barometer of its support level beyond its Gaza stronghold. Hamas boycotted the first Palestinian general elections in 1996 and has also excluded itself from the upcoming election on January 9 to replace Yasser Arafat as Palestinian Authority president.
| "Moose limbs don't need no damned elections! That's why we have holy men!" |
Some candidates are from Hamas, some from the leftist terrorist group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and others are running as independents, but the vast majority are members of the mainstream terrorist Fatah faction. Hussein al-Sheikh, a Fatah terrorist leader in the West Bank, was confident that the movement's candidates would do well in the first local Palestinian elections in 28 years.
| "After all, we control the ballot boxes, don't we?" |
"Internal polls that we have carried out predict that Fatah terrorists will get more than 70 percent of the vote," he told AFP. Hamas has voiced disquiet over the partial nature of the vote, and the fact the civil register is being used and not the electoral register which it argues opens up the process to fraud.
| In Paleostine? Fraud? Oh, pshaw! Who can imagine such a thing? |
Five terrorists election candidates have been arrested by Israeli forces in the run-up to the polls. Qaher Hamada, who is standing as a PFLP candidate, was detained at his home in the town's refugee camp in a pre-dawn operation last week.
| "Soon's yer done kissin' that baby, you can stick 'em up, Qaher!" |
Four Islamist terrorist candidates standing in the Dahariyeh area, near Hebron, were arrested the week before. The Palestinian Authority has agreed to a quota system that will see at least two women elected in every municipality. |