‘Secretive’ Hamas elections spark internal party row

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Hamas Chief Ismail Haniyeh and Islamic Jihad Chief Ziyad al-Nakhalah attend the Palestinian factions' meeting over Israel and the United Arab Emirates' deal to normalise ties, in Beirut, Lebanon September 3, 2020. (REUTERS)
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Updated 30 January 2021
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‘Secretive’ Hamas elections spark internal party row

  • According to widely circulated information, Haniyeh is not guaranteed to remain in his post for a second term in light of Turkish-Qatari support for the return of former chief Khaled Mashaal, who, according to procedural rules, can become president again

GAZA CITY: Secret Hamas internal elections have become the subject of a growing rift in the party amid calls for greater openness and representation ahead of Palestine’s general elections scheduled for May.

The General Shoura Council of Hamas rejected a request by the political leadership to postpone internal elections for one year in order for the party to devote time to legislative elections, in which Hamas can maximize its political clout.

Hamas, which will celebrate its 34th anniversary this year, is looking to new leadership to lead the party over the next four years, but internal disputes are surfacing, bucking the trend of secrecy and traditionalism within the movement.

An official Hamas source said that if the Cairo-hosted inter-Palestinian dialogue on general elections proves successful, Hamas will immediately begin internal elections, provided they finish in two months instead of six.

Hamas conducts its elections in complete secrecy in three regions — the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and the diaspora — once every four years in order to choose its leadership. Positions up for grabs range from leadership of sub-regions, Shoura Council spots and Political Bureau posts, which represent the highest “executive authority” in the movement.

The Political Bureau consists of 15 members, distributed evenly across Gaza, the West Bank and the diaspora. They are chosen by the Shoura, Hamas’ highest regulatory authority, which maintains an anonymous member count.

The last internal elections were held in 2017 and saw Ismail Haniyeh become head of the Political Bureau — the first time a Gaza-based leader was elected to an executive position.

According to widely circulated information, Haniyeh is not guaranteed to remain in his post for a second term in light of Turkish-Qatari support for the return of former chief Khaled Mashaal, who, according to procedural rules, can become president again.

Haniyeh, who comes from a refugee family, has lived abroad for more than a year, moving between Ankara and Doha, while Mashaal, who was born in Kuwait, has resided permanently in Doha since Hamas left Syria following disputes with the Bashar Assad regime.

Last month, Hamas held elections for new leadership of the High Commanding Authority in Israeli prisons. Salama Al-Qatawi, a detainee, was appointed chief, detainee Abdel Nasser Issa his deputy, while 13 other prisoners were granted membership of the movement.

The anonymous Hamas source told Arab News that Hamas prisoners are dissatisfied with the leadership positions and their perceived lack of power in decision-making.

The source added that the prisoners are calling for prisons to be adopted as a fourth region in elections, their leader made a member of the new Political Bureau, and his deputy made a member of the Shoura Council.

If their campaign proves successful, the prisoners will have a representative in the Political Bureau for the first time in years.

Wasfi Qabha, a prominent Hamas leader in the West Bank and former minister of prisoners, defended the right of the prisoners to be represented in the Political Bureau.

He expressed dissatisfaction with prisoner and West Bank representation in the last election, adding: “It is not acceptable for the prisoners not to have a representative, and those who represent the West Bank have members residing outside it.”

The West Bank is represented in the Political Bureau by exiled ex-prisoners and leaders who have settled in the region, which has led to accusations that its leadership lacks authenticity.

“The principle is that whoever leaves the West Bank is counted on the quota of abroad, and leaves the representation of the West Bank to its people. The West Bank is not a minor child in need of guardianship,” Qabha told Arab News.

West Bank elections are supervised by Saleh Al-Arouri, deputy head of the Political Bureau, who has lived abroad following his deportation in 2011 that came after his release from an Israeli prison as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange.

Hamas’ internal system relies on secrecy. It forbids members from directly running for any of its leadership bodies. Rather, it is based on the principle of endorsement, whereby figures are selected to compete for leadership vacancies — from the lower level to the upper.

Recently, new voices have emerged within Hamas calling for a change in the traditional pattern of elections to keep pace with developments and to face both internal and external challenges.

These include Ghazi Hamad, head of the Ministry of Social Development in Gaza, who wrote the article “Hamas elections — between traditional stereotypes and the required renewal,” in which he argued that it is time to “break the tradition and adopt change, frankness, boldness and qualitative action.”

Hamad addressed the Hamas base, saying that it is wrong to limit the elections of a great movement with a history, popularity and national presence to purely partisan walls.

He added that some people want elections to remain “traditional, stereotypical and secret,” denying members the ability to communicate and revise leadership, and limiting choices only to certain geographic areas.

Khalil Al-Hayya, a member of the Political Bureau, said in an interview with Hamas’ Aqsa TV that the movement took its decision to conduct internal elections as per the scheduled dates, adding that elections will be conducted “smoothly and in a friendly atmosphere.”

 


Suspected Somali pirates seize a new Yemeni fishing boat in second recent attack

Updated 56 min 51 sec ago
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Suspected Somali pirates seize a new Yemeni fishing boat in second recent attack

  • Piracy off the Somali coast peaked in 2011 when 237 attacks were reported

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates: Suspected Somali pirates have seized another Yemeni fishing boat off the Horn of Africa, authorities said.
In a statement late Tuesday, a European naval force known as EUNAVFOR Atalanta said the attack targeted a dhow, a traditional ship that plies the waters of the Mideast, off the town of Eyl in Somalia.
It said the attack Monday remained under investigation. It comes 10 days after another pirate attack on another Yemeni fishing boat which ultimately ended with the pirates fleeing and the mariners on board being recovered unhurt.
Piracy off the Somali coast peaked in 2011 when 237 attacks were reported. Somali piracy in the region at the time cost the world’s economy some $7 billion — with $160 million paid out in ransoms, according to the Oceans Beyond Piracy monitoring group.
The threat was diminished by increased international naval patrols, a strengthening central government in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, and other efforts.
However, Somali pirate attacks have resumed at a greater pace over the last year, in part due to the insecurity caused by Yemen’s Houthi rebels launching their attacks in the Red Sea corridor over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.
In 2024, there were seven reported incidents off Somalia, according to the International Maritime Bureau.


After decades in exile, Syria’s Jews visit Damascus

Updated 19 February 2025
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After decades in exile, Syria’s Jews visit Damascus

  • The new authorities have said all of Syria’s communities will play a role in their country’s future
  • The synagogues and Jewish school in the Old City remained relatively well-preserved

DAMASCUS: For the first time in three decades, Rabbi Joseph Hamra and his son Henry read from a Torah scroll in a synagogue in the heart of Syria’s capital Damascus, carefully passing their thumbs over the handwritten text as if still in awe they were back home.
The father and son fled Syria in the 1990s, after then-Syrian president Hafez Assad lifted a travel ban on the country’s historic Jewish community, which had faced decades of restrictions including on owning property or holding jobs.
Virtually all of the few thousand Jews in Syria promptly left, leaving less than 10 in the Syrian capital. Joseph and Henry — just a child at the time — settled in New York.
“Weren’t we in a prison? So we wanted to see what was on the outside,” said Joseph, now 77, on his reasons for leaving at the time. “Everyone else who left with us is dead.”
But when Assad’s son and successor as president Bashar Assad was toppled in December, the Hamra family began planning a once-unimaginable visit to Damascus with the help of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a US-based advocacy group.
They met with Syria’s deputy foreign minister at the ministry, now managed by caretaker authorities installed by the Islamist rebels who ousted Assad after more than 50 years of family rule that saw itself as a bastion of secular Arab nationalism.
The new authorities have said all of Syria’s communities will play a role in their country’s future. But incidents of religious intolerance and reports of conservative Islamists proselytizing in public have kept more secular-minded Syrians and members of minority communities on edge.
Henry Hamra, now aged 48, said Syria’s foreign ministry had now pledged to protect Jewish heritage.
“We need the government’s help, we need the government’s security and it’s going to happen,” he said.
Walking through the narrow passages of the Old City, a UNESCO-listed World Heritage Site, Henry and Joseph ran into their onetime neighbors — Palestinian Syrians — and later marveled at hand-painted Hebrew lettering at several synagogues.
“I want to see my kids come back and see this beautiful synagogue. It’s a work of art,” said Henry.
But some things were missing, he said, including a golden-lettered Torah from one of the synagogues that was now stored in a library in Israel, to where thousands of Syrian Jews fled throughout the 20th century.
While the synagogues and Jewish school in the Old City remained relatively well-preserved, Syria’s largest synagogue in Jobar, an eastern suburb of Damascus, was reduced to rubble during the nearly 14-year civil war that erupted after Assad’s violent suppression of protests against him.
Jobar was home to a large Jewish community for hundreds of years until the 1800s and the synagogue, built in honor of the biblical prophet Elijah, was looted before it was destroyed.


Lebanon official media says Israeli strike kills one in south

Updated 19 February 2025
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Lebanon official media says Israeli strike kills one in south

BEIRUT: Lebanese official media said Israel struck a southern town on Wednesday, killing one person, a day after Israeli troops withdrew from most of the border area apart from five points.
"An enemy drone struck a vehicle... in the town of Aita al-Shaab," near the southern border, the official National News agency said, reporting one person was killed.


Israel army says charges five soldiers for abusing Palestinian detainee

Updated 19 February 2025
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Israel army says charges five soldiers for abusing Palestinian detainee

  • The detention center near the Israeli border with Gaza was created to hold detainees from the Palestinian territory early in Israel’s war with Hamas

Jerusalem: The Israeli military said Wednesday it had filed charges against five reservist soldiers for abusing a Palestinian detainee in July last year.
“Today, the military prosecution has filed an indictment against five reservist soldiers under the charges of causing severe injury and abuse under aggravating circumstances... against a security detainee held in the Sde Teiman detention facility,” it said in a statement, referring to a site used to hold Gazans since the war began.
“The indictment charges the accused with acting against the detainee with severe violence, including stabbing the detainee’s bottom with a sharp object, which had penetrated near the detainee’s rectum,” the statement said.
It added “the acts of violence have caused severe physical injury to the detainee, including cracked ribs, a punctured lung and an inner rectal tear.”
It said the incident took place on July 5, 2024, following an instruction to conduct a search of the detainee during which he was “blindfolded, and cuffed at the hands and ankles.”
The detention center near the Israeli border with Gaza was created to hold detainees from the Palestinian territory early in Israel’s war with Hamas, sparked by the militant group’s unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack.
Earlier this month, an Israeli military court sentenced a soldier to seven months in prison after he admitted to “severely abusing” Palestinians at the same detention facility.


Baghdad-Beirut flights sell out ahead of Nasrallah funeral

Updated 19 February 2025
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Baghdad-Beirut flights sell out ahead of Nasrallah funeral

  • Beirut airport will close for four hours during the funeral

BAGHDAD: Flights from Baghdad to Beirut are nearly at capacity as airlines increase services ahead of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s funeral, officials said.
The pro-Iran group has called for a huge turnout when Nasrallah, killed in a September Israeli strike, is laid to rest in the Lebanese capital on Sunday.
“Iraqi Airways will increase its flights to Beirut from one flight a day to two, starting on February 20,” said transport ministry spokesperson Maytham Al-Safi, citing heightened demand ahead of the funeral.
An Iraqi airline official told AFP that “all seats on Iraqi Airlines flights from Baghdad to Beirut are booked.”
A source from Lebanon’s Middle East Airlines (MEA) reported increased flights between Baghdad and Beirut from Friday to Tuesday.
The airlines’ websites show that Iraqi Airways flights are fully booked until Sunday, with MEA nearly sold out.
Iraqi lawmakers and officials are expected to attend Nasrallah’s funeral privately, an Iraqi official said.
Representatives from pro-Iran Iraqi factions, Hezbollah’s longstanding allies in the Tehran-led “axis of resistance,” are also expected to participate.
Beirut airport will close for four hours during the funeral.
Hezbollah has said 79 countries would be involved in the commemoration, either officially or through “popular” support.
Sunday’s funeral will also honor Hashem Safieddine, a senior Hezbollah figure who had been chosen to succeed Nasrallah, before he was killed in an Israeli strike in October.
After decades at the helm of the group once seen as invincible, the killing of the charismatic Nasrallah sent shock waves across Lebanon and the wider region.
Since Nasrallah’s death, portraits of him, either alone or alongside other slain pro-Iran commanders, have been displayed throughout Baghdad and other areas of the Shiite-majority country.
On Sunday afternoon, thousands are expected to attend a “symbolic” procession for Nasrallah in Baghdad’s northwestern neighborhood of Kadhimiya, which is home to a Shiite shrine.