Poll in Palestine postponed until Jerusalem voting guaranteed, Abbas says

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said Friday that elections had been postponed until there was a guarantee voting can take place in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, further delaying polls in a society which last voted in 2006, AFP reported.

Addressing a meeting of Palestinian factions, Abbas said he had urged the international community to push Israel to allow campaigning and voting in east Jerusalem, an area annexed by the Jewish state in 1967 which Palestinians claim as their future capital, AFP reported.

But Abbas said the vote could not go ahead because Israel had provided no assurances regarding Jerusalem ahead of the legislative and presidential polls — called for May 22 and July 31 respectively, AFP reported.

“We decided to postpone the election until there is a guarantee on Jerusalem,” the 85-year-old Palestinian leader said.

Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and blockaded Gaza Strip have voiced hope that elections after a 15-year wait could help repair their fractured political system.

The polls were called following an agreement between Abbas’s secular Fatah movement, which controls the West Bank and its long standing rival Hamas, which runs the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip.

Hamas said Wednesday that it would reject “any attempt to postpone the elections.”