PMW director Itamar Marcus explains to Christian news network why Abbas refuses to hold PA elections

International world leaders are hoping that the upcoming Palestinian elections will be cancelled

JD: I understand there’s about a 90% chance they will not happen. What’s the latest?

  IM: It’s quite ironic what’s happening. The international community was pressuring the Palestinian Authority to be a democracy. There has not been elections since 2006 when Abbas was elected to a 5 year term. So it’s a little bite absurd and they’re giving them literally millions of dollars every year to promote democracy and the Palestinian Authority has turned into a dictatorship. 

The international community pressured the Palestinian Authority to have elections. Now what happened is because the Palestinian Authority is so corrupt Hamas turned out to be more popular in the public opinion polls recently. Not only were they more popular but Fatah which is the ruling party and supposedly the moderate party Fatah has split into three different groups so now the international community who is pressuring the Palestinian Authority to have elections is actually hoping that they cancel the election. They’re afraid that having a Hamas leadership of the Palestinian Authority. They won’t be able to give them financial support anymore and that will really isolate the Palestinian Authority. 

So what’s happening now is the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas he can’t say he’s canceling the elections because he’s so far behind in the polls. So what he’s done has created this issue. He won’t have elections if Israel doesn’t set up six polling stations for Palestinians in East Jerusalem. He’s using this as an excuse and in all likelihood he will blame the cancelation of elections on Israel for not allowing the voting in Jerusalem. The irony is that the European who would ordinarily probably have been furious with this in the end they’re probably going to be happy that he’s not having elections because they don’t want to lose on their willing to support.

  JD: Itamar Marcus explaining why the international community does not want Palestinian elections to go forward.