From the Liveblog of
Sunday, January 28, 2024
Abbas spokesman: If Hamas were to win Palestinian elections, we’d hand over government to them
Gianluca Pacchiani is the Arab affairs reporter for The Times of Israel
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the deputy prime minister of the Palestinian Authority and spokesperson for President Mahmoud Abbas, says that were Hamas to win in future Palestinian general elections, Abbas would be ready to hand over control of the PA to the terror group.
In an interview with the Saudi news channel Al Arabiya yesterday, Abu Rudeineh stresses that the Palestinian people need to find common ground and formulate a unified position, and that for the time being “the address for political decisions is the Palestine Liberation Organization and its President Mahmoud Abbas,” but after the war the PA “is ready to hold general elections, and if Hamas wins, the president will hand over the Authority.”
The Palestinian Authority has not held general elections since 2006, when Hamas won a majority of the seats in the legislative council, and subsequently staged a violent coup in the Gaza Strip.
Since the outbreak of the war, various PA officials have called for integrating the political wing of Hamas in a future Palestinian government, claiming that it is an essential component of Palestinian society.
Elections are seen by many in the international community as a key stage in the reform and revival of the Palestinian Authority, a body that is perceived as corrupt and ineffective, in order to boost its legitimacy and potentially enable it to take control over the Gaza Strip after the war.
Israeli officials have repeatedly stated that their goal in the war sparked by Hamas’s October 7 onslaught is the eradication of the terror group.
