No follow up on postponement of Palestinian elections from BBC News

As regular readers will be aware, the first report to appear on the BBC News website in connection to the municipal elections which were supposed to take place in PA controlled areas and the Gaza strip on October 8th came when they were postponed by a Ramallah court.pa-elections-art

On October 3rd the PA high court issued a further decision.

“The Palestinian Authority’s high court on Monday ordered municipal elections to be held only in the West Bank and not in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, though a new date for the suspended polls was not set. […]

“The court orders the implementation of the government’s decision on the holding of local elections,” court president Hisham al-Hatoo ruled before a packed courtroom in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

He said however the judiciary in Gaza did not have necessary “guarantees” in place for the holding of the polls.”

Following the court’s decision:

“The Palestinian Central Elections Commission on Monday urged Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to delay municipal elections by at least six months, after the PA high court ordered the polling be held only in the West Bank and not in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

The commission said a delay would be “in the Palestinian interest” in light of the ruling.

The court ruling could bring to an end hopes that the municipal elections would be the first since 2006 in which both Hamas and the PA would participate. […]

Hamas immediately dismissed Monday’s decision as “political.”

“The high court’s decision on the elections is discriminatory and ratifies the division” between Gaza and the West Bank, it said in a statement.”

To date BBC audiences have not seen any follow-up reporting on this latest chapter in the story of the chronically stagnant Palestinian democratic process and the related ever-widening Hamas-Fatah split.

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PA elections finally get some BBC coverage after postponement

 

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