Hamas chief meets Palestine election commission in Gaza

<p>By Nour Abu Aisha</p> <p>GAZA CITY, Palestine (AA) – Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas's political bureau, met with members of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Electoral Commission on Thursday.</p> <p>A delegation of commission members arrived in the blockaded Gaza Strip on Wednesday to discuss proposals for holding Palestinian legislative elections with Hamas officials.</p> <p>Neither side has yet issued a statement regarding the outcome of Thursday’s meeting.</p> <p>But Atef Abu Saif, a spokesman for the rival Fatah movement, was quoted as saying that legislative polls represented “the easiest way out of [Hamas-Fatah] political division”.</p> <p>In December, President Mahmoud Abbas claimed that the Palestinian Constitutional Court had dissolved the Palestinian Legislative Council (parliament) and had called for legislative polls to be held — throughout the Palestinian territories — within six months.</p> <p>Hamas, however, has challenged the legitimacy of the alleged court ruling, saying it was illegal and influenced by Abbas.</p> <p>Hamas and Fatah have remained at odds since the former seized the Gaza Strip from the latter in mid-2007 after several days of street fighting.</p> <p>In 2017, the two factions signed a reconciliation agreement in Cairo in hopes of ending years of animosity and division.</p> <p>Terms of the agreement, however, have never been implemented amid deep-seated differences between the two movements.</p>