Palestinian electoral body postpones January polls

Hamas: conditions not suitable for a successful election in absence of national consensus.

RAMALLAH, West bank - The Palestinian electoral commission on Thursday said the elections called for January should be postponed because the vote cannot take place in the Gaza Strip.

"I regret to say it is unfortunate that the elections will be postponed," commission head Hanna Nasser told reporters. "It has become clear to us that conducting elections in the Gaza Strip is not likely to happen."

The election delay risks throwing the divided Palestinians into a legal and constitutional limbo, since the mandates of both president and parliament will have run out in January.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas will consult with Palestinian Authority officials in the next few days and is likely to accept the commission's recommendation, officials said.

"I believe we will delay the date of the elections," said Azzam al-Ahmad, a member of the central committee of Abbas's Fatah party.

Abbas had called for presidential and parliamentary elections to be held on January 24, when the four-year mandate of the current Hamas-dominated parliament runs out.

But Hamas, which has control inside Israeli-besieged Gaza since June 2007, blasted the presidential decree as unconstitutional because his own mandate ran out last January.

Abbas was elected on January 9, 2005 for a four-year term. The Palestinian Authority extended his presidency by one year so presidential and parliamentary elections could be held on the same date, as required by Palestinian Basic Law.

"After January 25, there will be a legal vacuum because the president and parliament will no longer be legal," said Ahmad of Fatah's central committee.

A committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization will meet in December to "examine how to fill this legal vacuum," he said.

Hamas hailed the electoral commission's decision, adding that "conditions are not suitable for a successful election ... in the absence of a national consensus," spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said in Gaza.

The bitter rift between Fatah and Hamas goes back to the the 1990s, when strongmen of the Fatah cracked down on the resistance group.

Tensions jumped during the last parliamentary elections in January 2006 when Hamas, running for the first time in a national ballot, routed the long-dominant Fatah.