RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – The Palestinian Authority announced on Friday that it will hold heralded national elections, in the latest of many attempts to end more than a decade of infighting between President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement and his Islamist rival Hamas.
Palestinians’ last parliamentary ballot in 2006 resulted in a surprise win by Hamas, widening an internal political rift that led to the group’s seizure of the Gaza Strip in 2007 and contributed to the long delay in setting further elections.
The PA, which has limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, will hold legislative elections on May 22 and a presidential vote on June 31, a decree from Abbas’s office said.
“The President instructed the election committee and all state apparatuses of the state to launch a democratic election process in all cities of the homeland,” the decree said, referring to the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.
(Reporting by Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; Editing by Toby Chopra)
