Sheikh Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais, head of the General Presidency for the Affairs of the Two Holy Mosques, announced on Tuesday the lifting of the removal of the preventive barriers around the Holy Kaaba.
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Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas shows his ink-stained finger after casting his vote during local elections at a polling station in the West Bank city of Ramallah, October 20, 2012. (AP/Majdi Mohammed)
Most Palestinians in East Jerusalem will be able to vote in the upcoming Palestinian elections regardless of whether Israel allows voting to take place inside the city, the Palestinian Central Elections Commission said on Monday.
According to the commission, around 150,000 residents will be able to vote in what Palestinians call the “Jerusalem suburbs” towns and villages that ring the capital. Israel defines these areas as lying in the West Bank, while the Palestinian Authority see them as part of its “Jerusalem Governorate.”
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Mar. 17, 2021
Mahmoud Abbas waited for more than a decade to call for elections to the Palestinian Authority’s Legislative Council, the presidency, and the PLO’s National Council. Ironically, those planned elections are likely to backfire, and cause irreparable harm to Palestinian democracy.
That’s not because elections and democracy are bad for Palestinians. But the
timing is terrible: the elections could jeopardize the post-Trump restoration of ties with the U.S., could throw the peace process into an even deeper freeze and could lead to Fatah’s disintegration.
Furthermore, the elections are scheduled to be held in the midst of a raging pandemic which Abbas is badly mishandling: failing to both secure vaccines by his own efforts for Palestinians, and failing to make the case forcefully enough that Israel, according to Geneva Conventions, UN Security Council Resolutions, and human rights codes, is responsible for securing the vaccine for Palestinians still l