Hamas chief meets Palestine election commission in Gaza

GAZA CITY, Palestine

Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas's political bureau, met with members of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Electoral Commission on Thursday.

A delegation of commission members arrived in the blockaded Gaza Strip on Wednesday to discuss proposals for holding Palestinian legislative elections with Hamas officials.

Neither side has yet issued a statement regarding the outcome of Thursday’s meeting.

But Atef Abu Saif, a spokesman for the rival Fatah movement, was quoted as saying that legislative polls represented “the easiest way out of [Hamas-Fatah] political division”.

In December, President Mahmoud Abbas claimed that the Palestinian Constitutional Court had dissolved the Palestinian Legislative Council (parliament) and had called for legislative polls to be held -- throughout the Palestinian territories -- within six months.

Hamas, however, has challenged the legitimacy of the alleged court ruling, saying it was illegal and influenced by Abbas.

Hamas and Fatah have remained at odds since the former seized the Gaza Strip from the latter in mid-2007 after several days of street fighting.

In 2017, the two factions signed a reconciliation agreement in Cairo in hopes of ending years of animosity and division.

Terms of the agreement, however, have never been implemented amid deep-seated differences between the two movements.

Writing by Mahmoud Barakat