Palestinian Authority (PA) Supreme Court cancelled on Thursday the local Palestinian elections in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Supreme Court, which is dominated by Fatah judges nominated by Fatah and PA leader Mahmoud Abbas, said that it had decided to temporarily suspend the elections. It said that it needed enough time to study the appeals against the status of the judicial system in the Gaza Strip after a lawyer had filed a complaint against it.
Meanwhile, the Court claimed that Jerusalem was out of the electoral process and therefore it would put off the elections until it finds a certain way to include it. Monitors said the decision is related to Fatah’s “unpreparedness” for the elections due to internal division, lack of national nominees and lack of a national programme. Regarding Jerusalem, the monitors said that it is unacceptable excuse because Abbas himself excluded it from any electoral process after none of Fatah candidates was elected in the parliamentarian elections in 2006. Since the announcement to hold the elections, PA and the Israeli occupation forces started to kidnap, threaten and put pressure on Hamas and its candidates in the occupied West Bank. The Palestinian Elections’ Commission, which was nominated by Abbas, dropped several Fatah electoral lists in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip over criminal records regarding one or more of the lists’ members.
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