Hamas: We Do Not Recognize Abbas as President

While the UN calls for Palestinian reconciliation, the Palestinian Information Center reports:

BEIRUT, (PIC)-- The Hamas Movement on Wednesday reiterated its rejection of extending the tenure of PA chief Mahmoud Abbas after it expires on 9/1/2009. Osama Hamdan, the movement's representative in Lebanon, expressed regret that Abbas did not assume his responsibility towards the Palestinian people in Gaza in face of the Israeli aggression. In a press statement, Hamdan said that no new political stand was taken by Abbas that would justify re-consideration of Hamas's position regarding end of his tenure. Abbas did not display any positive act for the sake of Gaza but rather adopted the American stands in this regard, he elaborated.

Abbas's presidential term technically expires today, although he intends to remain in office. In early December, before the crisis in Gaza, he postponed the Presidential election. The BBC story that reported Abbas's decision, also contains an interesting footnote on a poll. The report states (bolding mine):

If elections were held now in Gaza and the West Bank, the PCPSR poll indicated his [Abbas's] secular nationalist Fatah party would take 42% of votes while Hamas, the rival militant Islamist organisation which controls Gaza, would win 28%. The poll also suggests 40% percent of Gazans wish to emigrate, compared with 25% in the West Bank.

That 40% number suggests that even before the latest crisis, the average Gazan was not all that happy with the job Hamas was doing running the Gaza Strip. And if those numbers are adequate, of the roughly 4 million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, 1.3 million (700,000 in the West Bank and 600,000 of the 1.5 million in Gaza) would prefer to live somewhere else.