JERUSALEM, Jan 3: Israeli police stopped two leading candidates from canvassing in occupied east Jerusalem on the first day of the Palestinian election campaign on Tuesday, prompting new threats to cancel the whole ballot.

Mustapha Barghuti, runner-up in January’s presidential election, and the former peace negotiator Hanan Ashrawi were both attempting to defy a ban on any election activity in the eastern half of the city which was occupied and then annexed by Israel after the 1967 Six Day War.

Barghuti’s office said the rights activist had been arrested while on a walkabout in the Arab quarter of the walled Old City while Ashrawi, who is a resident of east Jerusalem, was ordered to stop canvassing in the same area.

Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas has already said he will cancel the election scheduled for January 25 unless residents of east Jerusalem can join the democratic process, a threat repeated by his prime minister Ahmed Qorei.

Hamas, however, warned against any such move, denying there was any agreement with Abbas’s Fatah faction for a postponement without voting in east Jerusalem.

Barghuti’s office said the candidate had been “meeting with ordinary Jerusalemites near Damascus Gate, discussing their needs and the situation of Palestinians in east Jerusalem.”

“He was approached by six undercover Israeli security agents, arrested, and taken to the Russian Compound jail where he remains under detention,” said a statement.

Although there was no immediate comment from the police, as a resident of the West Bank, Barghuti would have been automatically liable for arrest unless he had prior authorization to be in the city.—AFP