GAZA CITY - The Hamas interior ministry in the Gaza Strip said Wednesday that it would ban the holding of elections called for by Palestinian Authority president Mahmud Abbas in the coastal territory.
The ministry will hold accountable anyone involved in the elections," the interior ministry said in a statement.
The ministry added that it "rejects the holding of elections in the Gaza Strip because they were announced by someone who has no right to make such an announcement and because they came without national agreement."
Hamas -- which trounced Abbas's Fatah faction in the last parliamentary elections in January 2006 -- rejected the decree as an "illegal and unconstitutional step."
Hamas has consistently rejected the extension granted to Abbas, and no longer considers him to be the legitimate president of the Palestinian people.
On Saturday Hamas parliamentary speaker Ahmed Bahar said Abbas should be put on trial "for usurping power.
Last week Abbas called for presidential and parliamentary elections to be held on January 24 after Hamas declined to sign on to an Egypt-brokered reconciliation agreement that was inked by his Fatah party.
Israel, which wants to crush any Palestinian liberation movement, responded to Hamas's win in the elections with sanctions, and almost completely blockaded the impoverished coastal strip after Hamas seized power in 2007, although a ‘lighter’ siege had already existed before.
Human rights groups, both international and Israeli, slammed Israel’s siege of Gaza, branding it “collective punishment.”
A group of international lawyers and human rights activists had also accused Israel of committing “genocide” through its crippling blockade of the Strip.
Gaza is still considered under Israeli occupation as Israel controls air, sea and land access to the Strip.
The Rafah crossing with Egypt, Gaza's sole border crossing that bypasses Israel, rarely opens as Egypt is under immense US and Israeli pressure to keep the crossing shut.
Fatah has little administrative say in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and has no power in Arab east Jerusalem, both of which were illegally occupied by Israel in 1967.
Israel also currently occupies the Lebanese Shabaa Farms and the Syrian Golan Heights.
Israel's recent war on Gaza killed nearly 1,400 Palestinians, mainly civilians, and wounded 5,450 others.
Among the dead were 437 children, 110 women, 123 elderly men, 14 medics and four journalists.
The wounded include 1,890 children and 200 people in serious condition.
The war also left tens of thousands of houses destroyed, while their residents remained homeless.
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