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Hamas to participate in local Palestinian elections

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Hamas has announced that it will field a full list of candidates in Palestinian local and municipal elections scheduled for October, in an apparent surprise for the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Hamas said that its list will be known as the National Technocrat Party and a statement explained that Hamas “sees the necessity and importance of holding local elections in the Gaza Strip and West Bank”. The statement also pledged that Hamas would “work to facilitate and make the elections successful in a way that serves the interest of our people”.

According to YNet, the head of the Palestinian Central Elections Committee, located in Ramallah, travelled to Gaza to meet Hamas’s Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, to discuss exactly how a vote would be held in Gaza, which is under Hamas’s full control.

YNet speculates that Hamas, which did not participate in local elections in 2012, is interested in using the upcoming ballot as a barometer of support in the West Bank. There has been speculation that elections may soon be held for the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), for the first time in ten years. Hamas won a majority in the 2006 PLC vote, but the Fatah-controlled PA, headed by President Mahmoud Abbas, has not convened the forum since then.

Ever since Hamas violently seized the Gaza Strip from the PA in 2007, relations between Fatah and Hamas have been strained. There have since been several attempts at reconciliation between the two factions, with a unity government established in April 2014, which helped bring an end to US-brokered peace talks between Israel and the PA. However, like several similar agreements, the unity agreement was never fully implemented and the two have not shared power. Hamas remains in exclusive control of the Gaza Strip, while the PA is the sole authority in Palestinian areas of the West Bank.

Meanwhile, Hamas’s  leader Khaled Meshaal is expected to stand down from his position over the summer, although it is unclear who might succeed him.