Abbas says he will dissolve Palestinian parliament

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said Saturday he intended to dissolve the largely defunct Palestinian parliament controlled by his rivals Hamas following a court decision ordering the move.Abbas did not say when the Ramallah-based Palestinian Constitutional Court issued the ruling that includes holding elections within six months of the Palestinian Legislative Council being dissolved.
"The issue reached the Constitutional Court which issued a verdict to dissolve the legislative council and call for legislative elections within six months, and this is what we must implement immediately," Abbas said when meeting members of the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah.
The step would allow Abbas to further pressure Hamas, the Islamist movement that runs the Gaza Strip.
Though the parliament has not met since 2007, when Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip, Palestinian law allows for its speaker to act as interim president should 83-year-old Abbas die in office.
Hamas won the last parliamentary elections in 2006 in a landslide, resulting in an electoral dispute with Abbas's Fatah.

Abbas's term was meant to expire in 2009, but he has remained in office in the absence of elections.

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Hamas is warning Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas that dissolving the parliament it controls would bring chaos.
Abbas' announcement Saturday to dismantle the Palestinian Legislative Council "destroys the political system and opens the door to chaos in the Palestinian arena," said Yehiha Moussa, a Hamas lawmaker.
Moussa says the PLC, where Hamas holds a majority after a 2006 landslide victory against Abbas' Fatah party, expires only when a new parliament is formed after elections.

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Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah party said Monday that its rival Hamas had carried out widespread arrests of its members in the Gaza Strip ahead of a rally marking the anniversary of the movement's founding.Hamas denied the accusation, with a spokesman for the enclave's interior ministry saying 38 people had been held for questioning over concerns that opposing Fatah factions in Gaza would clash at the rally set for later in the day.
All had been released, said spokesman Iyad al-Bozum.
Fatah and Hamas remain deeply divided and Abbas, based in the occupied West Bank, has sought to increase pressure on the Islamist movement in recent days.
"More than 500 of our members and sons have been arrested since last night by Hamas security forces in Gaza," Atef Abu Saif, a spokesman for Fatah in the Gaza Strip, said in a statement.
Saif said the arrests were an attempt by Hamas to disrupt activities to mark Fatah's 54th anniversary.
But there were also concerns over tensions between Fatah factions loyal to Abbas and his exiled rival Mohammed Dahlan, who is from Gaza and has a significant base of support there.
Repeated attempts to reconcile Fatah and Hamas have failed. A list of issues have kept them apart, including Hamas's refusal to disarm its military wing.

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The Palestinian Authority said on Sunday it had ordered its employees to pull out from the Gaza-Egypt border crossing, effectively closing the main exit point from the impoverished Gaza Strip.The dispute over the border stems from a rift between the PA, based in the occupied West Bank and headed by Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and the Islamist militant group Hamas, which took control of Gaza more than a decade ago in a civil war.
Re-opening the Rafeh crossing, which according to human rights groups is the sole exit point from Gaza for an estimated 95 percent of its 2 million population, will require Egypt to agree on a new operator.
It is unclear whether it will allow Hamas to run the passage. Cairo has not so far commented on the situation.
PA employees were deployed to Gaza's border crossings with Israel and Egypt in 2017 under Egyptian mediation in what was seen as the first concrete step towards ending the dispute.
The PA said Sunday's decision to pull out from the crossing was a response to Hamas undermining its operations and detaining some of its workers.
"After Hamas's insistence on bolstering division ... and the questioning, detention and suppression of our employees, we have become convinced it is useless to maintain our presence there," it said.
The decision takes effect on Monday, though the crossing was already scheduled to be closed until Tuesday due to a holiday.
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum told Reuters the closure of the border amounted to "additional sanctions by Abbas against the people of Gaza".
"This is a blow to... Egypt, which had overseen the handover of the crossings as part of the implementation of the reconciliation deal that Abbas has destroyed," he said.

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Hamas security forces have taken control of security at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza, displacing some Fatah-aligned units in the process, AFP reported Jan. 7.

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Egypt will keep its crossing with the Gaza Strip closed to departures from the Palestinian enclave after the Palestinian Authority withdrew its officials amid disagreements with Hamas.The Gaza's Interior Ministry, controlled by the militant group Hamas, said Monday that Egyptian officials notified them that the crossing would only be open to those entering the Gaza Strip.

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Gaza's Islamist rulers Hamas said Thursday that Egypt plans to fully reopen its border crossing with the enclave, days after partially closing it amid infighting between Palestinian factions.

An Egyptian security delegation visited Gaza on Thursday, meeting with senior Hamas officials including its head Ismail Haniya.
Khalil al-Hayya, deputy head of Hamas, told journalists the Egyptians "assured us that there will be no changes at the Rafah border and it will stay open".
It was not immediately clear when the crossing would fully reopen.
Hayya said he expected that all sides would also stick to an informal truce agreement with Israel.

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The decade-long Palestinian split looks set to deepen in the coming months, with president Mahmud Abbas poised to take multiple measures against Gaza to squeeze its Islamist rulers Hamas.

Among these could be removing staff from the crossings between Israel and Gaza -- making it hard for the Jewish state to allow anything into the territory without dealing directly with Hamas, which it and many other countries label a terrorist organisation.
They could also include cutting salaries to families of Hamas prisoners or rescinding Palestinian passports for Hamas employees.


The official said the PA spent around $100 million per month in Gaza, including for electricity subsidies, and was looking to cut back significantly.
"Those that want to rule Gaza must bear the responsibility of governing it," the official said.
Azzam al-Ahmad, a senior Abbas ally and negotiator of the 2017 reconciliation agreement, told AFP "the leadership is considering a number of measures".
Senior Hamas official Bassem Naim said the Islamists had seen similar threats before.
"Any type of sanctions such as electricity, preventing medicine, closing the border or cutting the salaries are intended to blackmail residents into rising against Hamas and they fail," he told AFP.
"This is the most that Abbas can do."

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Thousands of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank joined a strike on Tuesday against their government's proposed new social security law, fearing the fund will be mismanaged.The strike, which saw much of Ramallah, Hebron and other Palestinian cities closed, comes hours before president Mahmud Abbas is due to address the United Nations.
A few thousand people protested outside the Social Security Corporation in Ramallah, where Abbas's government is based.
Under the proposed system both private employers and their employees would pay monthly into a government-managed fund, with employees receiving a pension when they retire.
The government says it will provide new security for employees, arguing similar systems exist in countries across the globe.
Protesters say they do not trust the Palestinian government to manage the fund and point out there are no guarantees.
They also say Israel's occupation of the West Bank means that the long-term existence of the Palestinian Authority government is far from secure.

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Palestinian prime minister Rami Hamdallah offered to resign on Monday, as president Mahmud Abbas seeks to form a new government.The moves by Abbas are seen as part of attempts to further isolate his political rivals Hamas as a decade-long split in Palestinian politics deepens.
Hamdallah has "put his government at the disposal of President Mahmud Abbas", the prime minister's spokesman Yussef al-Mahmud said in a statement.
The premier later confirmed the offer during a visit to the southern West Bank city of Hebron, but denied a new government was an attempt to squeeze Hamas.
"We hope that all Palestinian factions will participate in this (new) government and I appeal to the Hamas movement to participate," he said.
It came after the central committee of Abbas's Fatah movement recommended late Sunday the formation of a new government that would comprise members of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).
The Islamist movement Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip, is not part of the PLO.


Abbas has also pledged to hold new parliamentary elections in the coming six months, but how that would be possible in Gaza is unclear.
Hamas won the last parliamentary polls, in 2006, against expectations.
Israel, the United States and other Western powers, which all consider Hamas a terrorist organisation, rejected the result.
Hamas and Israel have fought three wars in Gaza since then.
Rumours of a new government have been swirling in recent weeks, and Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri attacked such a plan.
"The formation of any government apart from a national consensus one is a continuation of the unilateral actions taken by Fatah," he tweeted Sunday.
"Such a government will enjoy no legitimacy."
It remains unclear what form any future government could take, but analysts warned that keeping Hamas out of it would deepen political divisions.
"The move has been described as furthering national unity but if anything such a move -- if Hamas is excluded -- may achieve the opposite, compounding current internal divisions, and pushing Gaza further away," said Hugh Lovatt, Israel-Palestine analyst at the European Council of Foreign Relations.
Jihad Harb, a West Bank-based political analyst, said if a government were formed from only the PLO it would indicate an end to already stalled attempts at reconciliation.
"The formation of this political government means the end of the (2014) agreement (between Hamas and Fatah)," he said.

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Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah has submitted his resignation to President Mahmoud Abbas following a recommendation by the Fatah Central Committee, The Jerusalem Post reported Jan. 29.

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The sole passenger crossing between Gaza and Egypt will reopen in both directions Tuesday, the strip's Islamist rulers Hamas said, after it was partially closed amid Palestinian political infighting.In a statement late Monday, the Hamas-run interior ministry announced "the opening of the Rafah border crossing in both directions on Tuesday".
There was no immediate confirmation from Egypt.


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Economist Mohammed Shtayyeh, a member of the West Bank's dominant Fatah party, was named Palestinian prime minister on Sunday in what the rival Hamas group that runs Gaza called a blow to unity efforts.The appointment was announced six weeks after Rami al-Hamdallah tendered his resignation from the post and the resignation of his unity government to President Mahmoud Abbas, underscoring the failure of Hamas and Fatah to implement a power-sharing deal.
Speaking to Palestine Television, Shtayyeh said he would immediately begin consultations with factions belonging to the Palestine Liberation Organization, which Abbas heads, on forming a new cabinet.


Shtayyeh's immediate challenge is to shore up the cash-strapped PA, which exercises limited self-rule under interim peace accords with Israel.
The PA has been squeezed by steep U.S. aid cuts, with the cash crisis exacerbated by a dispute with Israel over the withholding of some 5 percent of the monthly tax revenues it transfers to the Authority.
Israel said the money it is holding back is used by the PA to pay stipends to families of militants killed or jailed by Israel. The PA has refused to accept any tax transfers until those funds are restored.
Shtayyeh, seen largely as a technocrat, most recently headed the Palestinian Economic Council for Research and Development, a donor coordination and advocacy body established by the PLO in 1993.

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