Palestine President Mahmud Abbas announces first national elections in 15 years

The contested State of Palestine is all set to hold its national elections in 15 long years. Speaking at a recent press briefing, state President Mahmud Abbas revealed that legislative polls would be held on May 22 while a presidential vote would take place on July 31. Palestine, since late Arab-Israel war has been torn in what experts call the world’s most intractable conflict between the Israeli regime and Palestine’s Abbas led administration.

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Politics in Palestine  

The state of Palestine is sharply divided between Abbas’s Fatah party which controls authority in occupied West Bank and Hamas group which yields power in the Gaza Strip. Observers have stated that it is the disagreement and rivalry between both the faction that has primarily stalled elections. However, Israel and its allies advancing towards the interior of Gaza strip, both the sides, in September 2020 came to an agreement and decided to hold an election in 2021.

Pertaining to the same, the Hamas group upheld Presidential decision and called for “free and fair elections" in the region. “In recent months, we have worked to overcome obstacles in order to reach this day,” it stated in a statement.  It added that it looked to “free elections in which voters can express themselves without pressure and without restrictions, in all fairness and transparency.”

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The Palestinian elections come as Israel said that it was now seeking to establish tourist hubs in the holy Muslim city of Jerusalem. With the reconciliation of Bahrain and UAE’s relations with Israel, Palestinian leaders are seeing dwindling Arab support, which has been leverage in their battle to re-capture the West Bank.

While Palestinians have sharply rejected the normalization of reconciliation of relations between Israel and Gulf, small-time traders and shopkeepers have favoured the move hoping for some income. “There will be some benefits for the Palestinian sector of tourism, and this is what I’m hoping for,” Sami Abu-Dayyeh, a Palestinian businessman in east Jerusalem who owns four hotels and a tourism agency told AP “Forget about politics, we have to survive.” The prospects of expanded religious tourism are being helped by trade observers who see it as a help to both Isreal and Palestine.

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