(Ha'aretz) Danny Rubinstein - The first thing you can learn from the Fatah primaries held last week is that there is a danger that the general elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council scheduled for Jan. 25 might not even take place. The Fatah primaries were accompanied by outbursts of violence, exchanges of gunfire, and general thuggishness, to the extent that the voting in several districts had to be canceled or postponed. Many observers said that if this sort of unrest could occur during an internal party election, there will almost certainly be much more serious violence when Fatah and Hamas run against each other. Riots notwithstanding, the majority voted for candidates of the young guard as opposed to the arrivals from Tunis. The membership of Fatah want to see in their parliament "alumni" of the intifada, nearly all of whom are ex-prisoners, many of whom carry weapons in the name of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades.
2005-12-05 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive