Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad have again called for a unified leadership to be set up following Yasser Arafat's death. The groups want to be part of a joint leadership until presidential elections scheduled for early January 2005. For now, both groups are refusing to participate in the election. They argue that the vote will only be used to install a leader associated with Mr Arafat's Fatah movement, which has always held the levers of Palestinian power. But the powerful Islamist movement, Hamas, and its sister party, Islamic Jihad, say that they should now be drawn into the power structure. "We are opposed to any monopoly on power."
Unless we have the monopoly |