The Palestinian high court in Ramallah has suspended Palestinian local elections that would have served as the first electoral test for the rival Fatah and Hamas movements in a decade.
The court halted preparations for the October 8 poll after a dispute over party lists in Gaza, which is controlled by the Hamas terror group, as well as a legal challenge to Palestinians’ inability to vote in East Jerusalem.
Hisham Kuhail, chief electoral officer with the Palestinian Central Elections Commission insisted: “This is a temporary postponement… We have to abide by the court decision, therefore we stopped our operation until the court rules on the case”.
The news came after it emerged that Fatah had selected a candidate, Tayseer Abu Sneineh, who had murdered six Israelis and wounded 20 in 1980 during the Beit Hadassah terror attack (known by the Palestinian Authority as Daboya Operation).
Tayseer was one of four terrorists who took part in the operation, which Fatah described in an official Facebook post in August as “one of the most important battles and acts of bravery of the Fatah movement”.
Tayseer was described on the ballot paper as a “hero of the Daboya Operation” who undertook the operation because the “Zionist occupiers denied the rights of the Palestinian people”.
This is not the first time that Fatah has glorified those who have committed murder. Marwan Barghouti murdered five Israelis in a spate of killings during 2001-2002. He is currently spending five life sentences in an Israeli prison. Despite this, the Palestinian Authority has campaigned for him to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
