ISLAMABAD: The Pakistani prime minister’s special adviser on religious harmony and the Middle East, Tahir Mahmood Ashrafi, said on Tuesday the Muslim world must come together to thwart what he called an Israeli ‘conspiracy’ to block Palestinian elections.
The first Palestinian elections in 15 years appeared to be headed for a delay on Tuesday amid a dispute over voting in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem and splits in President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party.
Many Palestinians were skeptical from the start on whether parliamentary and presidential votes planned for May and July would even take place after they were announced by Abbas in January. Now 85, Abbas has been in power since 2005.
Palestinian officials close to Abbas have told international media Israel had officially informed the Palestinians that it would not permit balloting in Jerusalem, the contested city at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Salman bin Abdulaziz, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and other heads of Islamic countries must play their part in thwarting Israel’s conspiracy to block the elections in Jerusalem,” Ashrafi said in a statement after meeting Palestine’s ambassador Pakistan, Ahmed Jawad Rabi.
“The sacrifices of the Palestinian people are unforgettable,” Ashrafi added. “The Muslim Ummah will not accept any election in Palestine without Al-Quds. The world powers and the Muslim Ummah will have to take immediate action against the Israeli atrocities.”
Rabi said he was “grateful to the government of Pakistan for its stand in this regard.”
Pakistan currently does not recognize the state of Israel over its thwarting of Palestinians’ aspirations for a state of their own. Israel captured the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the Sinai Peninsula the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights in the 1967 war.
Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future free state, a demand Pakistan has supported for decades.
