Violence postpones Gaza balloting

Ruling Palestinian party calls off vote Primary seen as key democratic reform

KHAN YOUNIS, GAZA STRIP—

The ruling Fatah party cancelled its primary election in Gaza at the end of a full day of voting yesterday after gunmen disrupted at least a dozen polling places, firing in the air and stealing some ballot boxes. The violence underscored Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’s inability to maintain order in the Gaza Strip, or even in his own party, as Fatah tries to fight off a strong challenge from the Islamic Hamas group in the Jan. 25 parliamentary elections. The vote yesterday was to be part of the first primary held by Fatah, a democratic reform considered crucial to removing the taint of corruption from the party. Many young Fatah activists, long frozen out of power by entrenched party leaders, have insisted that transparent primaries — rather than secret backroom negotiations — determine the party’s slate of legislative candidates. Even before the voting began yesterday, problems emerged. Technical glitches forced voting in the southern town of Rafah and areas of central Gaza to be postponed, Fatah officials said.

At some of the roughly 190 Fatah polling stations that did open across Gaza, many voters found their names were not on registration lists or that they had been mistakenly registered at the wrong station. Fatah officials said it was their first experience holding a primary and that they had only a short time to compile lists of the 200,000 eligible voters in Gaza. Some militants lost patience.

In one station in a village in eastern Khan Younis, a group of about 15 Fatah gunmen, angry at not finding their names on the list, began shooting in the air, witnesses said. Officials then closed the polling place for about 45 minutes. Polling stations in the towns of Beit Hanoun and Deir el- Balah were also closed after similar incidents. Elsewhere, Fatah gunmen barged into a polling station in the Sheik Radwan neighbourhood of Gaza City, took

its 16 ballot boxes into a

yard, poured gasoline

over several of them

and set them on fire,

witnesses said.

At least a dozen polling stations were closed because of problems with gunmen.

Fatah officials held an emergency meeting yesterday afternoon and decided to cancel the primary, nullifying the votes already cast, according to a party statement. The primary would have to be rescheduled, possibly for Friday, a Fatah spokesman said, adding the party’s candidates would have to be chosen by Saturday. It was unclear how officials could ensure a new round of voting would be any smoother. Abbas has had trouble bringing order to the Gaza Strip since Israel withdrew from the territory in September. A long-time Fatah leader in Gaza, Abdel Aziz Shahin, called on the Fatah central committee to take responsibility for the voting chaos and resign.

“ Fatah is like a dinosaur, and the head of this dinosaur is not aware of the rest of the body,” he said. Hassan al- Kashef, a political columnist with the Palestinian Al Hayat Jedideh

newspaper, blamed Fatah for yesterday’s violence, which he described as “ a shock and a wake- up call” that could have damaging consequences for the party. The Gaza primaries had been expected to continue the trend from earlier voting in several West Bank districts that swept away many Fatah old-timers, who controlled the party for decades and were seen as corrupt, replacing them with younger, more popular politicians. The housecleaning is crucial to Fatah’s campaign to beat back the strong challenge from Hamas, which has wooed Palestinians in part with its image of honesty.

After nightfall, Israel fired artillery shells at fields inside Gaza after Palestinian militants aimed a mortar and a rocket at Israeli villages just outside the territory, the military said. No casualties were reported from either the Palestinian attack or the Israeli retaliation.