ABU DIS, West Bank, Dec 23 (AFP) -
Palestinians in 26 municipalities across the West Bank began voting Thursday
in the first council elections in 28 years which will act as an electoral
barometer for next month's presidential ballot.
They are the first elections for councillors
to be held in the Palestinian territories since 1976.
More than 140,000 electors were choosing from 886 candidates, including 139 women, as they select local council officials for the town of Jericho and 25 villages in the West Bank. A second tranche of elections will take place on January 27 in 10 other localities in the Gaza Strip.
Among those expected to take part in the voting was Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qorei, a resident of the village of Abu Dis on the edge of east Jerusalem.
Armed police could be seen on patrol as polling booths opened at 8:00 am (0600 GMT) in Abu Dis after being granted permission to bear weapons for the day by the Israeli authorities, an AFP correspondent reported.
Although vote counting would finish three hours after the polls closed, the final results would not be officially announced until Saturday, local election commission spokesman Firas Yaghi told AFP.
The elections will mark the first time the hardline Islamist group Hamas has participated in the Palestinian democratic process and will serve as a test of its level of support in comparison to the mainstream Fatah movement.
Hamas boycotted the first Palestinian general elections in 1996 and has also excluded itself from the upcoming election on January 9 to replace the late Yasser Arafat as Palestinian Authority president.
Some candidates are from Hamas, some from the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and others are running as independents, but the vast majority are members of Fatah.
PLO chairman Mahmud Abbas is overwhelming favourite to win next month's ballot having been nominated as Fatah's candidate.
Hussein al-Sheikh, a Fatah leader in the West Bank, was confident that the movement's candidates would give Abbas' campaign a shot in the arm by registering a strong result.
"Internal polls that we have carried out predict that Fatah will get more than 70 percent of the vote," he told AFP.
Hamas has voiced disquiet over the partial nature of the vote, and the fact the civil register is being used and not the electoral register which it argues opens up the process to fraud.
Five election candidates have been arrested by Israeli forces in the run-up to the polls.
Qaher Hamada, who is standing as a PFLP candidate, was detained at his home in the town's refugee camp in a pre-dawn operation last week.
Four Islamist candidates standing in the Dahariyeh area, near Hebron, were arrested the week before.
The Palestinian Authority has agreed to a quota system that will see at least two women elected in every municipality.
bur-co/txw
Copyright (c) 2004 Agence France-Presse
Received by NewsEdge Insight: 12/23/2004 02:17:12