Abbas calls for early elections

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_2045734,00.html
Ramallah, West Bank - Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said on Saturday that he decided to call for early presidential and parliamentary elections to resolve an unprecedented political crisis with ruling Hamas.

"I decided to call for early presidential and legislative elections," Abbas said to applause during an eagerly awaited speech in Ramallah.

"Basic law stipulates that the people are the source of power," he said. "Let the people have their say and decide."

"I will talk as quickly as possible with the central elections commission to launch the preparations" for the ballot, he said.

Prior to the speech, Hamas had warned that early elections would amount to a coup against their government, which has been in power for less than a year, and vowed to fight any such move.

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http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/article2079588.ece

there is a real conflict building here and Palestine (who can't afford more violence) looks to be headed to civil war also.

Saturday, December 16, 2006

By Donald Macintyre

Hamas yesterday uncompromisingly rejected calls for new elections as fresh violence threatened a slide into worsening and potentially bloody conflict between it and the rival Fatah group it ousted in last January's poll.

The Islamist faction staged a formidable display of popular strength at a rally in its Gaza City heartland, while in the West Bank city of Ramallah, hospital officials said at least 32 of its supporters were injured, some critically, when Fatah-dominated security forces fired on demonstrators. There were also exchanges of fire between the two factions in Gaza City, close to the home of Mohammed Dahlan, a prominent Fatah figure accused by a Hamas spokesman yesterday of being behind the gun attack on the convoy of the Palestinian Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh, on Thursday. The attack killed a bodyguard and injured his eldest son, Abed Haniyeh.
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He added that people had come to the rally to "swear they would not recognise Israel"one of the international conditions for lifting the boycott.

In a reference to the deployment of armed Fatah forces, including those of Mr Abbas's presidential guard, who fired at Hamas militants at the Rafah terminal on Thursday, Mr Hayya said: "What a war, Mahmoud Abbas, you are launching, first against God, and then against Hamas." But he insisted: "We will not be pushed into a civil war planned by collaborators."

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and the west didn't like it. Now they are being a second chance to get the answer right? That's not what I call democracy.