GAZA CITY: The Islamist Hamas movement said on Monday it would boycott Palestinian local elections in the occupied West Bank, saying the vote would worsen the internal Palestinian divide.
The elections were called for July 17 by the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, which has been confined to the West Bank since Hamas seized power in Gaza in June 2007 and drove out President Mahmud Abbas’s secular Fatah movement.
Hamas "will not participate in these municipal elections because they were called for by a government that is unconstitutional. The results of the municipal elections will lack credibility and integrity."
Hamas has not recognized Abbas’s authority since his four-year presidential term ended in January last year.
"Parliamentary and municipal elections should be the fruit of an internal national consensus," the group said in a statement.
The smaller Islamic Jihad movement said it too would boycott the poll, and that it would not lend its support to any other list or candidate.
"The elections were announced in a unilateral way without national consensus, which reflects a determination to deepen and make permanent the internal rift," it said.
Hamas rejected the Palestinian Authority’s calls for parliamentary elections, which by law were to be held earlier this year, on similar grounds.
Hamas had already denounced the poll as "illegal" but the electoral commission has said its rejection would not undermine the vote because it would be held on a local basis.
Hamas swept several large Palestinian towns in the last local elections held in stages between 2004 and 2005. It also scored an upset victory in parliamentary elections in 2006.
But it remains blacklisted as a terrorist organization by the European Union and the United States.
