WEST BANK (Dispatches) – Palestinian activists have launched campaigns and petitions calling for Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas to step down after 15 years in office, Safa news agency reported.
Palestinian writer and activist Mohammad Shoukry said: “Such campaigns and petitions are part of the rights enshrined to the Palestinian people.”
“Abbas himself gave us this right when he said in a TV show that when there are ten people taking to the streets calling for me to step down, I will step down.”
Shoukry continued: “In the recent months, all of us have seen hundreds taking to the streets in Ramallah calling for him to step down following his involvement in the murder of activist Nizar Banat.”
“We have seen how the West Bank could not protect the escaped Palestinian prisoners because Abbas, his PA, and security services chased and fought every popular incubator of the resistance against the Israeli occupation.”
Shoukry accused Abbas of “disregarding all the popular calls for him to step down.”
Abbas, he explained, “deprived the Palestinians of their basic rights, including the right to carry out elections as he postponed them more than once because he wanted elections on his own terms.”
The activists stressed that the Palestinians have the right to choose their representatives.
“The Palestinians deserve to have a president who represents their real choices and believes in their right to all the Palestinian lands, including Al-Quds.”
Abbas’s term as PA president ended on 9 January 2009, but he did not give up his post to the parliament speaker, as stipulated by Palestinian law, and has been using the internal division as a pretext to prevent carrying out presidential or parliamentary elections.