Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced a referendum fiercely opposed by the Hamas government on Saturday as the Islamists ended an 18-month truce with a barrage of rockets at Israel.
The first-ever Palestinian referendum will take place on July 26, according to the decree signed by Abbas and read out to reporters.
”The Palestinian people in Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are asked to give their verdict in a referendum on July 26 on the document of national unity — the prisoners’ document,” Abbas said in the decree.
Hamas swiftly blasted the move, accusing Abbas of trying to stage a coup against the government of the Islamist movement that swept to power after crushing Abbas’s Fatah faction in a January election.
”This is a coup against the choice of the Palestinian people,” senior Hamas lawmaker Mushir al-Masri told Agence France-Presse.
Before the announcement, Hamas had warned the referendum could lead to an ”historic split” among Palestinians, which would take years to overcome.
If approved by voters, the plan would implicitly recognise Israel’s right to exist and lead to a creation of a national-unity government.
The blueprint would undercut the Islamist movement’s platform of refusing to recognise Israel or disavow violence, even within Israeli borders, as well as bounce it into a coalition with Fatah.
Abbas, in contrast, has long championed a negotiated settlement to the conflict with Israel and criticised suicide bombings.
The build-up to the announcement was overshadowed by the continuing fall-out from the killing by the Israeli military of eight Palestinians who were shelled while enjoying a picnic at Gaza’s seaside on Friday.
Hamas has largely held off rocket attacks since the beginning of last year as part of an agreement reached with Abbas, but its armed wing unleashed 15 of their makeshift rockets in retaliation for the beach killings.
Four Palestinians were slightly injured when one of the rockets went astray.
The resumption of the firing seemed likely to herald a new escalation in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians that began with the intifada uprising in September 2000.
Abbas has been a consistent critic of the rockets but he made no effort to hide his anger at the seaside killings, which he called ”a bloody massacre”.
Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz contacted Abbas to express regret for the deaths as the government struggled to contain the diplomatic fall-out.
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan was ”deeply disturbed” at the killings while British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said ”the killing of innocent civilians is utterly unacceptable”.
The United States State Department also voiced its ”regret” while calling on both sides to exercise restraint.
Abbas decreed three days of mourning and postponed the announcement on the referendum by several hours so it did not clash with the funerals.
Voters will vote yes or no to a document calling for a national-unity government, an end to attacks in Israel and the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel on land conquered by the Jewish state in 1967.
The Palestinian leader decided to push ahead with the referendum, which he first unveiled two weeks ago, after talks aimed at resolving a series of disputes between Hamas and his own Fatah movement failed to make progress.
”We had 10 days of dialogue without any agreement and that forced us to think about the alternative, which is a referendum,” he said in his statement to reporters.
The two sides have been at loggerheads over a range of issues, in particular control of the security services, which remain under the remit of Abbas despite Hamas’s crushing parliamentary election victory over Fatah in January.
Hamas has set up its own rival paramilitary force, whose deployment on the streets of Gaza resulted in deadly clashes with members of the official security services, with 17 people killed since May.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, meanwhile, dismissed the referendum as ”meaningless” and said it would have no bearing on the prospects of reviving the bilateral peace process. — AFP
