‘A coup’: Palestinian factions slam parliamentary poll delay

“The decision to postpone the planned Palestinian elections, including the legislative elections originally scheduled for 22 May, is deeply disappointing,” Borrell said in a statement.

“We strongly encourage all Palestinian actors to resume efforts to build on the successful talks between the factions over recent months. A new date for elections should be set without delay.”

The delay risks inflaming tensions in a politically fractured Palestinian society.

Earlier this week, Al-Quds daily, known for being close to the PA, revealed that Abbas was under Arab and American pressure to delay the polls. It said the pressure was due to the likelihood of Hamas winning the elections.

Protests

Speaking to Al Jazeera before the decision, Palestinians in the occupied West Bank said if the Palestinian government really wanted to hold a vote, it would have found a solution.

“It’s easy to find excuses,” a Palestinian shopkeeper said.

Following Abbas’s decision, hundreds of angry Palestinians gathered in the central city of Ramallah and the Gaza Strip to condemn the move.

“We have an entire generation of young people that doesn’t know what elections mean,” Tariq Khudairi, a protester in Ramallah, told AFP news agency. “This generation has the right to elect its leaders.”

Buying time

Abbas’s critics had charged that he would use the Jerusalem issue to buy time as Fatah’s political prospects deteriorated.

Hamas was seen as better organised than Fatah and well placed to gain ground in the West Bank.

Observers also see the Jerusalem issue as a possible pretext for the cancellation because a victory for Abbas’s heavily divided Fatah is considered uncertain.

In recent polls, two-thirds of respondents expressed dissatisfaction with the president.

Abbas has also faced challenges from Fatah splinter groups, including one led by Nasser al-Kidwa, a nephew of iconic Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, and another by a powerful, exiled former Fatah security chief, Mohammed Dahlan.

‘Nonsense’

During the last Palestinian election, East Jerusalem residents cast ballots on the outskirts of the city and thousands voted in post offices, a symbolic move agreed to by Israel.

Israel’s foreign ministry said this week that elections were “an internal Palestinian issue, and that Israel has no intention of intervening in them or preventing them”.

But it made no comment on voting in Jerusalem, the city it describes as its “undivided capital” and where it now bans all Palestinian political activity.

Abbas told PLO leaders that he had received a message from Israel saying it could not offer guidance on the Jerusalem issue because the Jewish state currently had no government.

Israel is itself mired in its worst-ever political crisis, with no government yet formed following the inconclusive March 23 elections.