In Hebron, Fatah faces a civil war at the polls
HEBRON, West Bank — Wednesday noon, downtown Hebron. Registration for the various slates for the upcoming local elections will be closing in roughly 36 hours, and it is hard to sense anything unusual in the air. Those who see themselves as candidates are meeting with their advisers and their friends in anticipation of the official announcement of their candidacy, but no election posters have yet gone up in the city.
The well-known restaurants here — Al-Khalil, Abu Mazen, the Pasha’s Palace — are full of customers, and one would be hard-pressed to say that the residents are all that excited about the municipal elections planned for October 8.
The talk of the day, of all things, is an incident that took place here just about two weeks ago, when an argument between two kids devolved into a deadly armed battle between two clans in the city.
Yet although the public in Hebron seems somewhat indifferent to the elections, for the Fatah party, tensions are as high as the stakes.
These are the first elections in more than a decade in which voting is taking place at the same time in both Gaza and the West Bank, and Hamas and Fatah are going head-to-head.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/in-hebron-fatah-faces-a-civil-war-at-the-polls/
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