Fatah Allowed to Merge Its Election Lists

GAZA CITY, 27 December 2005 — A Palestinian court ordered the reopening of the registration process, clearing the way yesterday for the ruling Fatah movement to merge rival lists of candidates for a January parliamentary ballot and end a damaging split.

Rivals in President Mahmoud Abbas’ ruling Fatah party had at first presented two candidate lists, then decided they wanted to merge them into one as a way to counter a challenge from the surging Hamas group.

The ruling of the electoral court was needed because the official deadline for registering candidates was Dec. 14. After an appeal, the court said it would reopen registration for a further six hours. It was not immediately clear when the six hours would begin.

The justification was that operations were suspended for six hours by the election commission during the registration process to protest attacks by gunmen on its offices. The gunmen were from Fatah. There are no differences between Fatah’s factions on the political program of negotiating for a state alongside Israel. Younger members seeking a bigger share of power are challenging the old guard.

Hamas, committed to destroying Israel, has been boosted ahead of the election by the division in Fatah — one of the gravest crises in its 40-year history. Polls show Fatah might get more than 45 percent if it united but could fall to 21 percent if it remained split.

Hamas, running for the first time in the legislative elections, gets about 30 percent in opinion polls. But it swept local council votes in West Bank cities last week, alarming Fatah as well as Israel, the United States and European Union.

Meanwhile, Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon will undergo a cardiac catheterization next month to fill a hole in his heart, his doctors said yesterday. They said the small hole probably caused the minor stroke suffered by the premier last week, by allowing a blood clot to travel from the heart to the brain. The clot briefly blocked the blood flow to part of the brain, but quickly dissolved and left no permanent damage, although Sharon had difficulty speaking during the stroke, a team of doctors told a news conference in Jerusalem.

Sharon is in good health and in the same condition as before the minor stroke, said professor Tamir Ben-Hur, the chief neurologist at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital, where he was treated.

Also yesterday, the Israeli Housing Ministry invited tenders for 228 new homes to be built in two Jewish settlements in the West Bank close to occupied East Jerusalem.

In an advertisement published in the Haaretz newspaper, the ministry called on construction firms to submit tenders to build 150 housing units in Beitar Illit and another 78 in Efrat. Under the terms of the internationally drafted road map peace plan, Israel must freeze all Jewish settlement activity and tear down wildcat outposts that have sprung up without official government approval.

The United States, one of the four co-sponsors of the blueprint, has repeatedly called on Israel to halt settlement expansion. Sharon has frequently spoken of his intention to strengthen Israel’s hold on the major settlement blocs in the West Bank.

Earlier in the day, Palestinians fired two rockets into Israel. One landed next to a kindergarten in a farming community near the Gaza Strip and the other landed near a village, south of the coastal city of Ashkelon, Israeli radio stations reported.

Palestinian groups in Gaza threatened “a decisive and violent reaction” in response to any attempt by Israel to impose a buffer zone in northern Gaza.

“Our advanced rockets will chase them (Israelis) everywhere and nothing will protect them until they leave our land defeated and humiliated,” said a statement issued by Islamic Jihad, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and the Popular Resistance Committees.