Jerusalem – With rallies throughout the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Palestinians on Monday wrapped up a parliamentary election campaign that will be a showdown between the long-dominant Fatah movement and the militant Islamic faction Hamas.
Monday was the last day of campaigning permitted before the vote Wednesday. In a final appeal to voters, several Fatah candidates, including Muhammad Dahlan, a former security chief, visited the Gaza City home of Yasser Arafat, the former Palestinian leader who died in November 2004.
Hamas, responsible for many attacks against Israel, has sought to attract more moderate voters. A senior Hamas leader, Mahmoud Zahar, suggested that his group, which has always rejected negotiations with Israel, might consider indirect talks.
“Negotiations are a means,” Zahar told reporters in Gaza City. “If there is something from the enemy side to be offered, like stopping aggression, releasing our prisoners, we could find a way. The political crime is when we sit with the Israelis and then come out with a wide smile to tell the Palestinian people that there is progress when in fact there is not.”
ap polls in recent days continue to give Fatah a lead of several percentage points, though Hamas has steadily been closing the gap and none of the parties may win an outright majority.
Many Palestinians have accused Fatah of widespread corruption and poor governance in running the Palestinian Authority since it was founded in 1994.
One ranking Fatah official offered an apology at a campaign rally in Gaza City. “Fatah admits there were mistakes in the past and Fatah apologizes to our people for these mistakes,” said the official, Salah al-Masharawi, Reuters news agency reported.
Like Israel, the U.S. regards Hamas as a terrorist group.
“As a matter of policy, we don’t talk to terror organizations,” Stewart Tuttle, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, said Monday. “We haven’t dealt with Hamas and we won’t deal with Hamas members who are elected to the Palestinian legislature or who are in the Cabinet.”