Palestinian Information Minister, Nabil Shaath, said on Wednesday that the Palestinian Authority will cancel January 25 parliamentary elections if Israel goes ahead with its plan to bar the Palestinian residents in Jerusalem from their voting right.
“If Israel insists on not allowing us to conduct the elections in Jerusalem, then there will be no elections at all”, Shaath said.
Senior Israeli officials told Veronique de Keyser, head of the European delegation of election observers, that Israel will bar Palestinians in Jerusalem from voting in Jerusalem for the January 25 Palestinian legislative elections.
Israel claimed that this decision is linked to the participation of Hamas in the elections.
In previous elections, Palestinian residents of Jerusalem voted by mailing their ballots from Jerusalem post offices or driving to polling stations in nearby West Bank suburbs.
According to the Oslo Accords, Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem are allowed to vote in Palestinian elections via their local post offices. Palestinian residents of Jerusalem participated in the last legislative elections which were held in 1996, and the Presidential elections, earlier this year.
