Hamas stunned all observers by winning a landslide victory in the elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council. As of web posting, unofficial results gave Hamas 77-80 of the 132 seats on the council.
The Palestinian cabinet resigned after initial results were published, and Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) is due to decide who will form the new government led by Hamas. Hamas leader Dr. Mahmoud el Zaher has already declared that Hamas will not change a word of its covenant, which calls for the destruction of Israel.
Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is meeting with advisers tonight, following the new developments in the territories. One of the first issues on the agenda will be whether Israel will continue transferring to the PA taxes collected for it by Israel under the Paris agreements. Israel is due to transfer $80 million to the PA next week.
Transfers were frozen for a short period in 2002, but even while the worst terrorist outrages were taking place, Israel did not stop the flow of funds, except for deducing the PA’s debts to Israel and Israeli infrastructure companies. Israel transferred NIS 3.5 billion to the PA in 2005, compared with NIS 2.5 billion in 2004.
The financial markets responded moderately to the Hamas victory. The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange initially fell by over 1%, but recovered later, with the Tel Aviv 25 index finishing down 0.65%.
The shekel-dollar representative rate rose by only 0.28% to NIS 4.613/$. For the sake of comparison, when former Minister of Finance Benjamin Netanyahu resigned, the shekel depreciated 0.94% against the dollar, and 1.1% when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was hospitalized. The shekel-euro exchange rate rose 0.12% to NIS 5.6484/€.
The PA elections results were as follows:
- Hamas won at least 44 of 66 directly elected seats.
- Hamas won 30 of 66 seats elected nationwide.
- Fatah and other candidates won a total of 52-55 seats.
Published by Globes [online] - www.globes.co.il - on January 26, 2006