Abbas calls early polls as Hamas cries foul
Middle Desk Report

RAMALLAH (West Bank)—Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas has called for early elections amid seething tensions with Hamas, prompting the ruling Islamists to accuse him of staging a coup.
“We are living through difficult and miserable times ... To break the vicious circle and prevent our lives from deteriorating further and our cause from eroding, I have decided to call early presidential and legislative elections,” Abbas said Saturday.
“Basic law stipulates that the people are the source of power,” he said to applause during a speech in the West Bank town of Ramallah on how to resolve a spiraling political crisis and months-long standoff with Hamas. “Let the people have their say and decide,” said Abbas, who promptly won support for his call from Israel.
But Abbas left the the door open to forming a government of national unity with Hamas and avoiding early polls, which would be only the third election in the territories since the formation of the Palestinian Authority in 1994. “A national unity government composed of technocrats” remained “the first priority,” he said. The Hamas-led government, in power since March, immediately rejected the call for early elections, saying it was “a coup d’etat against the will of the Palestinian people”.
The move “contradicts Palestinian Basic Law”, Hamas spokesman Ismail Raduan charged. The Palestinian Basic Law, the effective constitution, does not address the issue of early elections. Hamas says the absence of such a provision prohibits holding early polls, while the Abbas entourage says such an election can be held since there is no passage specifically prohibiting it. The current Palestinian parliament was elected in January and is due to remain in office until the end of 2010. Abbas said he would begin preparations for the polls with electoral officials, while his senior aide, Yasser Abed Rabbo, said the elections “will take place between now and three months”. In an impassioned 90-minute speech, Abbas said he had the authority to fire the Hamas government and vowed to prevent civil war that some observers warned would break out if he chose to call early polls. “Firing the government is a constitutional right that I can exercise when I want,” he said. “Despite the suffering, the pain, the confrontations, whoever is responsible for them, we will not allow ourselves to sink into a civil war,” Abbas said. “Palestinian blood will remain a border that will not be crossed.”
Hamas’s armed wing also said it would do all it could to avoid clashes with Fatah supporters, although it called for street protests. “We will not allow internal battles to take place, as (spilling of) Palestinian blood is a red line,” the spokesman for the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, Abu Obeida, told reporters. “We call on our martyrs to confront the Zionist enemy and not to partake in a civil war,” he said. The announcement by Abbas was greeted with cheers and celebratory rounds of gunfire into the air from supporters of his Fatah party in Gaza City.