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RAMALLAH, June 8: Pales-tinian President Mahmoud Abbas will hold a referendum on July 31 on a statehood proposal that implicitly recognises Israel, officials said on Thursday.
Mr Abbas will issue a decree on Saturday formally announcing the referendum date, said the officials close to the president.
After initially calling the referendum earlier this week, Mr Abbas had given the government led by the Hamas Islamists a few more days to reconsider its position on a manifesto penned by Palestinian prisoners in an Israeli jail.
“The Palestinian people in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip will be invited to take part in a referendum on the basis of the prisoner’s document on Monday, July 31,” one of the officials said.
He said the referendum would ask Palestinians one question: Do you agree with the prisoners’ document or not?
A referendum, with opinion polls suggesting most Palestinians support the proposal, would be seen as a confidence vote on the Hamas government, whose election led the West and Israel to cut off funds to the Palestinian Authority.
Hamas swept to power in January elections and has been locked in a power struggle with Mr Abbas ever since. It rejects the proposal.
The manifesto implicitly recognises Israel by calling for a Palestinian state on all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which Israel captured in the 1967 war.
Mr Abbas had set a Tuesday deadline for Hamas to embrace the manifesto but delayed a looming showdown after what officials said were appeals by Arab leaders.
Israel rejects the manifesto. It has long insisted on keeping large Jewish settlement blocs in the occupied West Bank.
SHOW OF STRENGTH: Hamas staged a show of strength on Thursday to warn Mahmud Abbas against going ahead with the referendum.
Around 3,000 Hamas supporters gathered outside the Gaza branch of the Palestinian parliament to voice their opposition to the referendum, bolstered by support from the Islamic Jihad organisation.
“We reject and condemn the referendum which is the path to division and chaos,” Khalil el-Hayyeh, leader of the Hamas faction in the legislative council, told the crowds.
“The prisoner initiative is the base for the dialogue, it is the only way,” he told supporters near the scene of recent deadly Hamas-Fatah clashes.
Jihad leader Khaled Al-Batsh called for a boycott of the ballot which he said was part of ‘the game of the Zionist enemy and will destroy the rights of the Palestinians’.
A Fatah spokesman said Hamas’s opposition stemmed from its fear of losing, with polls showing around three-quarters of voters support the blueprint.
“We are surprised that the movement is afraid of facing the public and does not trust the Palestinian people,” said Jamal Nazzal.
Ahmed Bahar, Hamas’s deputy speaker in parliament, reiterated the movement’s belief that divisions should be resolved in talks and said the referendum would only ‘increase tension in the Palestinian arena’.—Reuters/AFP
