RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories —Palestinians in villages in the Israeli-occupied
West Bank voted in
municipal polls Saturday, amid a boycott by the main opposition
Hamas, the
Islamist rulers of
Gaza, in protest at the indefinite postponement of a general
election.
اضافة اعلان
No legislative or presidential election has
been held in the Palestinian territories for 15 years, while the last municipal
vote — also boycotted by Hamas — took place in 2017.
Of the 367 villages in the West Bank, 60 had
no candidates standing and another 162 had a single list, leaving only 154
villages actually voting on Saturday.
The spokesman for the
Palestinian Central Elections Commission, Fareed Taam Allah, told AFP that polling stations had
opened in all villages scheduled to vote on Saturday.
"I hope that elections will lead up to
a presidential election so that we can choose a president who represents us and
a new government," said Maslama Srour, a 26-year-old voter in Nilin, a
village near Ramallah.
"We don't want the same government, we
want to see something new, we hope to see change, new people, especially young
people," Srour told AFP.
Polling stations are open until 7:00pm (1700
GMT), with some 405,000 people eligible to vote. As of 4:00pm, the turnout
was 46 percent, according to the elections committee.
The municipal vote — the first of two
stages, with cities and towns due to vote in March 2022 — is widely considered
as inconsequential, with most candidates running as independents and Hamas not
taking part.
They are "politically unimportant
because they are taking place in villages and not the big cities,” and are
"futile" in the absence of Hamas, political analyst Jihad Harb said.
Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, is
boycotting the vote in protest at president Mahmoud Abbas's indefinite
postponement of parliamentary and presidential elections that had been
scheduled for earlier this year.
The Islamists had been poised to sweep the
parliamentary election, which was widely seen as the real reason for Abbas's
11th-hour postponement of the poll, citing Israel's refusal to allow voting in
annexed east Jerusalem.
Abbas's presidential term was supposed to
end in 2009.
Hamas and Fatah, the secular party led by
86-year-old Abbas, have been at loggerheads since 2007 when the Islamists
seized Gaza after a week of deadly clashes.
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