TEL AVIV, Israel, Dec. 16 (UPI) -- Tens of thousands of Hamas supporters Friday celebrated their party's victories in local elections in major West Bank towns.
The ruling Fatah party suffered a severe blow and Palestinian and Israeli analysts suggested developments might lead to postponing or undermining the Jan. 25 parliamentary elections.
Official results of Thursday's elections will be published next week, but results released so far show that Hamas won 73 percent of the votes in the West Bank town of Nablus, a hotbed of Palestinian nationalism. Hamas reportedly won 72 percent of the votes in El Bireh
moncler sale, which the Maan news agency described as "a leftist and Fatah kind of town." It reportedly won about 70 percent of the votes in Jenin. A coalition that included Fatah retained its lead in Ramallah, the Palestinian Authority's seat of power, that is partly Christian. However elections in Hebron, which is a decidedly Hamas town, were postponed. Israeli Brig. Gen. (in the reserves) Shalom Harari of the International Policy Institute for Counter Terrorism told United Press International the postponement was a sign of Fatah's concerns.
Hamas' spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told the Ramatan news agency the results of Thursday's elections indicate what his party could achieve in the parliamentary elections.
The Haaretz newspaper noted Hamas controls some 60 local councils with a total population of 700,000 people.
Bir Zeit University Political Science Professor Ali Jarbawi saw Thursday's vote as one against corruption
canada goose parkas, the security situation and the deteriorating economic situation but also a vote for Hamas, "because it is popular."
Pollster Nabil Kokali who heads the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research told UPI the returns were not surprising. Hamas is concentrated in those areas but Fatah is stronger in the villages, he said.
Rivalries within Fatah sometimes led to the creation of several lists that fought one another. Dismayed activists in Nablus stayed home, leaving the streets to Hamas' campaigners.
Divisions run right to the top and Fatah has failed to present a unified list for the parliamentary elections.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, composed one list in consultations with members of the Executive Committee. A rival list was presented under the name of al-Mustaqbal (the dawn).
The official Fatah group includes older party members and people who came to the West Bank and Gaza from Tunisia with Yasser Arafat about a decade ago. They won powerful positions partly because of their closeness to him. Some of them are suspected of corruption, are unpopular and consequently prefer a system of appointments in order to hold on to power.
The rival group grew up in the occupied territories
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There had been a "patriarchal" system, noted Jarbawi .
"Internal political legitimacy sprang from the authority of the late Yasser Arafat's charismatic leadership," he added.
Arafat died last year and Abbas' reserved personality and capabilities, which are different from Arafat's, created a new situation.
"Legislative elections were necessary to transfer the legitimacy from its individual-based foundations all found in Arafat -- revolutionary, historical and charismatic -- to the legal-institutional level needed to empower Abbas," Jarbawi wrote.
When Abbas declared his intention to hold parliamentary elections, Fatah members were divided on how to compose their list.
They agreed on primaries, but the vote was corrupted partly by gunmen who broke into polling stations.
"The primaries were not fair. There was false voting in many ballots and that made Abu Mazen decide to make changes in the results of the primaries," former Minister Ziad Abu Zayyad, who is running an independent
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In recent days, gunmen who identified themselves as members of Fatah's Al- Aksa Martyrs Brigades raided Central Elections Committee offices.
They threatened employees and fired at offices even when policemen were around. They damaged computers and files, forced candidates to leave the premises and several people were wounded, the Palestinian Authority's Chief Electoral Officer Amar Dwaik reported.
The attackers struck in Nablus and almost all over the Gaza Strip, Dwaik told UPI.
Abu Mazen made the Central Elections Commission reopen its offices and Foreign Minister Nasser al-Qidwa submitted Fatah's official list.
Al-Mustaqbal's list includes people who had been junior commanders in the first intifada such as Mohammad Dahlan, Jibril Rajoub and Kadurah Fares. Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life sentences in Israel for some of his activities during the intifada, is their leader.
Members of this group kept traveling to the Hadarim Prison northeast of Tel Aviv where he shares a cell with two inmates. Their consultations were held across a glass wall, the Prisons' Service spokesman Ofer Lefler told UPI.
"We suggested primaries...polls and they agreed to it but when the results came they did not honor them and arranged it so that they will head the list," Fares argued.
There is no total break with Fatah. The official Fatah list also has Barghouti at the top and Dwaik said Barghouti would have to choose. According to the Jerusalem Times press service, Dahlan said, "We will remain loyal to this movement ... Fatah will come out victorious."
Jarbawi was skeptical. "If they go in the elections with two lists and are divided I am not sure they can win," he said.
Hamas' victory in the local elections would boost its image and "give all those undecided voters a push to decide and I think they might decide Hamas," he said.
Efforts are now under way to reconcile the two groups.
Bitter divisions, in which lists compete over the very same voters in a society torn by chaos, corruption
Moncler, animosities, and where security forces are too weak to maintain law and order, could end in disaster.
Fatah has become "a band of fighting quarrelling clawing rivals for power. The old Fatah is gone now. Now it's a matter of getting to the top. Arafat is gone, discipline is gone ... ... the national liberation movement is gone
mbt schuhe kaufen," observed Bir Zeit University History professor Roger Heacock.
Developments have prompted some Fatah people to advocate postponing the elections.
"Now I am more skeptical" about the chances elections will be held on time, Jarbawi said. If Fatah will fail to unite, if influential people will be bitter about their place in the list, "they might ruin the elections. If Fatah as a whole finds that ... they are going to lose to Hamas, (that) it would be better for them not to have elections, they might persuade Abbas, pressure him, to postpone it ... (or) do something on the ground to make it impossible," he said.
Harari said there is such pressure on Abu Mazen who maintains he cannot postpone the elections because he already did so once. Abu Mazen insists elections will be held on schedule.
