The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Fatah won more than 42 percent of the vote and Hamas more than 34 percent, based on exit polling of 6,500 voters.
Debkafile is carrying the partial exit poll result in the Palestinian Elections and suggesting that Fatah can rule without a Hamas coalition. The Debkafile gives a little more detail:
Palestinian voters mobbed the 1,008 polling stations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip from the early hours of Wednesday Jan 25, to elect 132 members of parliament and their next government. Half of those seats will be chosen from 300 candidates on 11 national lists, half from 400 contestants in the constituencies. Of the 1.34 million eligible voters 58% had cast ballots three hours before balloting closed. Party activists agreed not to bear arms in the polling stations. But they are crowding the entrances. Indelible ink is used on voters’ fingers. In Gaza, Hamas’s green baseball caps and Fatah yellow flags and posters of its founder, Yasser Arafat, are prominent. In Jerusalem, where a small number of Palestinians are casting their votes in post offices, Israeli police prevented nationalist Knesset members Effi Eitam and Arye Eldad and four protesters from demonstrating against the election taking place in the Israeli capital.
Update:
The Jerusalem Post has now updated the original article and claims a very slim margin of victory for Fatah:
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Fatah won more than 46 percent of the vote and Hamas more than 39 percent, based on exit polling late Wednesday night. There was a high voter turnout of 77.7%.
Unofficial results are expected to be published on Thursday.
Don't hold your breath waiting for the "official" results. Official results have a way of disappearing in the Palestinian Authority. Wait for the news of the law suits over voter fraud instead to get only a feel for the actual numbers.
In other election news Ha’aretz is carrying the story of a mock Palestinian election being carried out in Palestinian rfugee camps in Lebanon in protest for being excluded from the vote in the disputed territories:
SIDON, Lebanon - Palestinians in Lebanon's largest refugee camp held a mock election Wednesday, making the point that while they could not vote in the polls in Gaza and the West Bank, they still intend to return to the land from which they were displaced. As Palestinian songs blared from loudspeakers, some 100 men and women stood in line in front of ballot boxes placed on a table near the office of the mainstream Fatah Party in Ein el-Hilweh camp outside the city of Sidon. Palestinians outside the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem were not allowed to take part Wednesday's parliamentary elections.
"We are a priority," said Abu Rabih, a refugee who was displaced during the 1967 war. "We should return today rather than tomorrow." Rabih added that he and his fellow refugees were "all for Fatah," the party of Palestinian Authority Chairman MahmoudAbbas. Fatah's commander in Ein el-Hilweh, Khaled Aref, said the refugees wanted to remind people of their demand to return.
But Rabih has a very valid point. Why are there still Palestinian Refugee camps located in the neigboring states? Why have absolutely no overtures been made by the Palestinian Authority to return any of these people to land under the direct control of the Palestinian Authority? Are some Palestinians more “Palestinian” than others?
In light of the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip there should be no excuse for delay of the return of at least some of the refugees. Surely a UNRWA camp run in Lebanon can just as easily be run in the Gaza Strip until such time that the civilian authority is able to re-settle these people permanently within its mandate.
And just exactly what was the rational used to deliberately exclude Palestinian refugees from voting in the current election? Even expatriate Iraqis voted in the last Iraqi elections were entitled; so why are Palestinians in refugee camps spread throughout the Arab world, and Palestinian nationals located beyond the camps; all denied a vote? Did Fatah, Hamas el al give up the “right of return” and the world never noticed? You'd think even Jimmy Carter would have noticed that a large group of Palestinians were deliberatedly excluded and denied a vote, but he has been uncharacteristically silent on this point.
The plight of Palestinian Refugees is dire, and if the goal of the Palestinian Authority is statehood; than its long past time that the PA starts acting like a nation rather than a disgruntal collection of thugs and despots fighting over the spoils of war that they have no intention of sharing - ever.
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