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Yearender: Palestinians bid farewell to 2019 with frustration yet hope amid stalled peace talks with Israel, obstructed general elections
From:Xinhua  |  2019-12-28 21:16

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GAZA, Dec. 28 (Xinhua) -- The Palestinians bid farewell to the passing 2019, frustrated, yet hopeful that the coming new year will witness a breakthrough in settling the internal Palestinian situation, in a way that strengthens their position vis-a-vis Israel.

Internally speaking, the Palestinians were seeking through the last quarter of the passing year to hold their general elections, the first in 13 years. However, they are still waiting for Israel's permission to let them hold it in East Jerusalem.

As peace talks with Israel have been stalled, the Palestinians received a push when the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced to open an investigation into allegations of war crimes in the Palestinian territories after a preliminary investigation that lasted more than four years.

INTERNAL SPLIT GOES ON

During 2019, the two Palestinian parties, Islamic Hamas movement and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement, failed to end their internal division which began when Hamas violently seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007.

A series of Arab and Egypt-brokered understandings reached between the two rivals had failed amid growing feuds between Hamas leaders and Abbas.

Failure to end the internal division has mounted frustration and despair among the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, where no official face-to-face meetings had been held except a meeting held in Moscow in Feb. 11, which included not only the two rivals but all Palestinian factions.

Moscow convention led to zero results, except getting a historic photo opportunity without being able to end their internal division.

A unity government, headed by the independent academic Rami Hamdallah, had been formed in accordance with the reconciliation agreements reached in April 2014. But this government resigned on Jan. 29, and was succeeded by a new one headed by Prime Minister Mohammad Ishtaye.

The formation of a new government has sparked outrage among Palestinian factions who said that asking Hamdallah's government, which is a unity government, to resign and forming a new government would deepen the internal division.

On Sept. 23, eight Palestinian factions presented an initiative to achieve unity and end division, but it did not gain the interaction and attention of the Palestinian official political level.

GENERAL ELECTIONS MET WITH DIFFICULTIES

On Sept. 26, President Abbas announced in a speech addressed before the United Nations General Assembly that he would call for holding legislative elections to be followed by presidential elections in the Palestinian territories.

He designated Hana Nasser, president of the Central Elections Commission, to start contacts and dialogue with Hamas movement and other political powers in the Palestinian territories. On Nov. 27, Hamas officially announced that it accepted holding the elections.

However, issuing a presidential decree that sets up a date for holding the elections was stuck with Israel's agreement to hold the elections in East Jerusalem.

Abbas's insistence on holding the Palestinian elections in East Jerusalem is to challenge U.S. President Donald Trump, who announced in late 2017 that the city is the capital of the state of Israel, according to analysts.

The first-ever Palestinian legislative and presidential elections were held in the Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem in 1996, while in 2005 Abbas was elected as the Palestinian Authority (PA) president and in 2006 Hamas won an overwhelming majority in the legislative elections.

PEACE TALKS WITH ISRAEL REMAIN STALLED

Peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians remained stalled since it had stopped in the spring of 2014 when the United States had sponsored it for nine months and ended without any breakthrough due to deep differences on the settlements, Jerusalem and the borders of the Palestinian state.

Since then, ties between Israel and the PA were only on the levels of security coordination as well as the day-by-day commercial activities of export and import at Israeli-controlled crossing points.

On July 25, President Abbas told a Palestinian leadership meeting held in Ramallah that he decided to stop working with the agreements signed with Israel in response to mass destruction of Palestinian homes southwest of Jerusalem.

During 2019, the Palestinian complaints over the increasing Israeli settlement activities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem were significant, while official figures showed 252 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip during 2019.

The year of 2019 has also witnessed increasing files of Palestinians, who are imprisoned in Israeli jails. Five prisoners died due to medical negligence and more than 5,000 prisoners remained behind bars in Israeli prisons.

This has been accompanied by the prisoners' complaints that the Israeli prisons' services were tightening its measures by placing disturbance devices of communications, preventing families' visits and putting more prisoners in solitude.

POLITICAL TIES WITH U.S. STILL SEVERED

During 2019, political ties between Ramallah and Washington remained severed as the latter declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel and moved the U.S. embassy to the city.

The Palestinians also insisted on rejecting dealing with the U.S. Mideast plan, better known as "Deal of the Century." Before President Trump came to power, the U.S. had been a major sponsor of the peace process between the two sides.

Ties with the United States worsened after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that Israeli settlements, build on the Palestinian lands, don't violate international law.

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