Abbas says he can sack Hamas govt

RAMALLAH: Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said on Saturday that he had the authority to fire the Hamas-led government but that any such move would not lead to civil war, in an impassioned speech in which he was expected to call for early elections. 

"I decided to address our people because of the suffering that they have endured over the past several months and during which they have had to suffer the insufferable," Abbas said.   

"I had to address the people, as the people are the source of power, the source of our sovereignty and our authority," he said.   

The Palestinian president said he had the right to dismiss the Hamas-led government, which has been in power for less than a year.   

"Firing the government is a constitutional right that I can exercise when I want," he said.   

"This is not a recipe for a civil war, as suggested by Zahar," he said, referring to Hamas's hardline foreign minister, Mahmud Zahar.   

According to the head of Abbas's Fatah party's parliamentary faction, Azzam al-Ahmad, Abbas will announce "his decision to call early presidential and parliamentary elections."   

The date of the early polls "will be determined in coordination with the central elections commission," Ahmad said.   

Abbas was due "to leave the door open to dialogue with Hamas over reaching an agreement on a government of national unity" but will not personally partake in such talks, he said.   

Hamas has repeatedly warned that early elections would amount to a coup and have vowed to fight any such move and rejected Abbas’s call.

Abbas denounced the killing last week of three young sons of a senior Fatah loyalist in Gaza and said investment there following last year's pullout by Israel of settlers and soldiers has been blocked by continuing violence.   

"The first part of our homeland became free of occupation," he said. "We had dozens of investment programs ... but unfortunately none of them happened. Why? Because we insist on firing rockets" into the Jewish state.  

"Israel said bye-bye to the Gaza Strip, so let us leave the Gaza Strip ... to investment... but yet there are those who until now insist on firing the rockets ... I am sure that's not in the national interest of our people," he said.  

"The Gaza Strip could have become an area to import workers from abroad, but we see the Gaza Strip living in poverty and unemployment," he said. 

He also slammed the ransacking of Gaza's Rafah border terminal by Hamas loyalists late on Thursday, as they waited for prime minister Ismail Haniya to return from a foreign tour.   

Abbas's eagerly awaited speech comes amid unprecedented tensions and rising violence in the Palestinian territories between moderate Abbas's Fatah party and the hardline ruling Islamists.   

Abbas and Hamas have tried for months to form a government of national unity. The talks collapsed over the ruling Islamists' refusal to cave in to Western conditions and over key ministerial posts in a coalition.   

The West, which considers Hamas a terrorist organization, is demanding that the Islamists renounce violence and recognize Israel and past peace deals. 

Hamas has steadfastly refused to do so.