WEST BANK/GAZA/JERUSALEM/USA/ENGLAND: ISRAELI FORCES CONTINUE TO SURROUND PALESTINIAN HEADQUARTERS IN HEBRON/THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY ANNOUNCES PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS FOR EARLY NEXT YEAR

Record ID: 838424

  • Title: WEST BANK/GAZA/JERUSALEM/USA/ENGLAND: ISRAELI FORCES CONTINUE TO SURROUND PALESTINIAN HEADQUARTERS IN HEBRON/THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY ANNOUNCES PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS FOR EARLY NEXT YEAR
  • Date: 25th June 2002
  • Summary: (W4) HEBRON, WEST BANK (JUNE 26, 2002) (REUTERS) (AUDIO GUNFIRE) GV FROM A DISTANCE OF PALESTINIAN HEADQUARTERS / AUDIO OF GUNFIRE LV OF BUILDING GV SMOKE RISING FROM HEADQUARTERS LV OF SMOKE RISING FROM HEADQUARTERS / ISRAELI TANKS PAN ACROSS BUILDING UNDER FIRE GV SMOKE RISING FROM HEADQUARTERS
  • Embargoed: 10th July 2002 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: HEBRON, RAMALLAH, JERICHO, BETHLEHEM, WEST BANK / GAZA / JERUSALEM / WASHINGTON D.C., UNITED STATES/ LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM
  • City:
  • Country: Palestinian Territories
  • Topics: International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVADKQ3ZRER56A195EKV94NRDW2Q
  • Aspect Ratio:
  • Story Text: The Palestinian Authority has announced that presidential elections will be held next January. Meanwhile, Israeli forces pounded the Palestinian headquarters in the West Bank town of Hebron for the second day running and maintained their tight grip on the six other West Bank cities they re-occupied last week.
    Israeli forces continued to surround the Palestinian headquarters in Hebron, West Bank, on Wednesday (June 26) - the day the Palestinian Authority announced presidential elections for early next year.
    Sporadic shooting echoed from the battered buildings as heavy black smoke filled the sky above the Palestinian headquarters.
    Elsewhere in the West Bank, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat met Russian envoy to the Middle East Andrei Vdovin at his Ramallah headquarters also encircled by Israeli tanks.
    Chief Palestinian minister Saeb Erekat said Arafat had given the order for presidential and legislative balloting sometime between January 10 and 20 and had also pledged an overhaul of security services, finances and courts within two to three months.
    Erekat made the announcement in the West Bank city of Jericho on Wednesday (June 26) two days after Bush called on Palestinians to elect leaders "not compromised by terror".
    Bush also said sweeping reforms were needed before a Palestinian state could be created.
    Bush's political dilemma is that opinion polls show Arafat widely favoured to win re-election, meaning Palestinians are likely to give a fresh mandate to a leader whom Washington has effectively written off.
    Arafat had brushed aside Bush's appeal for his people to replace him, but he appeared to be sending a message to Washington by pinning down the date for the first Palestinian elections since 1996.
    "President Arafat officially declared today that the election of the president of the Palestinian Authority and the election of the Palestinian Legislative Council will be held in January 2003," Erekat told reporters.
    He said the exact date would be set soon.
    Jericho was apparently chosen as the site for the election announcement because it is the only Palestinian-ruled West Bank city which Israeli forces have not seized in the past week following back-to-back suicide bombings in Jerusalem.
    Israeli forces maintained a tight grip on seven other West Bank cities on Wednesday, keeping hundreds of thousands of Palestinians locked in their homes under curfew.
    Erekat said it would be difficult to carry out elections and promised reforms if Israeli troops remained in place.
    Israel had welcomed Bush's Middle East policy speech on Monday (June 24) as proof Washington had joined Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's drive to sideline Arafat.
    Senior Israeli Foreign Ministry Spokesman Daniel Taub reacted to Erekat's announcement on Wednesday and said, "Until we see some sort of move to actually show the leadership has turned against terrorism as Bush demanded we are going to be sceptical about announcements".
    A senior U.S. official said on Wednesday that before deciding on his call for Arafat's removal, Bush received intelligence showing the Palestinian leader helped finance a group behind a series of suicide bombings in Israel.
    Arafat aide Nabil Abu Rdainah dismissed it as "Israeli propaganda".
    The new allegation emerged at a Group of Eight (G8) summit in the Canadian resort of Kananaskis, where key U.S. allies have expressed little enthusiasm for pushing Arafat aside.
    Britain played down talk of a serious policy rift with the United States over the Middle East on Wednesday but again refused to call for Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to stand down.
    Palestinian minister Nabil Shaath told a London news briefing on Wednesday that Arafat would stand in elections scheduled for January next year.
    Shaath said the Islamic militant group Hamas could make a strong showing were legislative elections to be held in the current political climate.
    "Hamas will probably make a significant showing, might even take over a majority of the parliament. I think their threat to the presidency is less, but yet what is the importance of getting President Arafat elected with a Hamas majority? That would not really lead to a going back to the peace strike either."
    Commenting on Bush's Middle East address, Shaath said there were some long-term positives for the Palestinians - notably his reference to an eventual Palestinian state -- but feared a pro-Israeli tone would lead to further hardening of views among Palestinian extremists.
    On the streets of Gaza, residents reacted to the news of Palestinian elections in January next year.
    "We welcome the fact that elections will take place in January but how can we do it when Israeli tanks are in the streets of our West Bank cities, villages and also in Gaza?"
    asked Ahmed Masouri.
    "We ask the Palestinian Authority for reform in the interest of our people. But there should not be any pressure from the Americans and the Israelis and there should be no conditions regarding who should be the new leader," said Kahled Wahib.
    U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States would respect the electoral choice of the Palestinian people.
    During a televised interview on Tuesday Powell said, " ...
    let them (Palestinians) evaluate the leadership that has produced these conditions and a leadership which does not move them closer to their desire for a state of their own.
    And we'll see what judgement they make. And then of course if it is that kind of election, free and fair, then we will respond to what the outcome of that election is".
    While the world pondered what would become of Arafat, the immediate future for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Ramallah, Bethlehem, Hebron, Qalqilya, Tulkarm, Nablus and Jenin meant Israeli reoccupation, curfew and searches.
    Asked how long the army would stay in the cities they entered after suicide bombers killed 26 people in Israel last week, Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said: "As long as it takes us to fulfil our basic duty to our children."
    Speaking on Israel's Channel One television, Ben-Eliezer said that on Tuesday alone Israeli forces had seized explosives belts, home-made rockets and "several terrorists and murderers of the first order" in sweeps through the West Bank.
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