GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Without holding elections, Hamas appointed on Oct. 26 a new head of the municipality in the Rafah governorate in the southern Gaza Strip. This prompted a wave of condemnation and rejections by Palestinian factions and civil society institutions in the Strip.
In a Facebook statement Oct. 26, the Rafah municipality said that “dignitaries and elites from the city of Rafah agreed to choose Anwar al-Shaer as the head of the municipality, succeeding Subhi Abu Radwan, during a meeting organized by the municipality and the Ministry of Local Government held on the same day.”
“I was chosen as a new president at the request of the Ministry of Local Government to renew the municipal councils,” Shaer, who was former deputy dean of the faculty of Sharia and law at the Islamic University in Gaza, said in a statement Oct. 27 to the local al-Watan Voice website.
He said he wished his appointment would not provoke controversy on the Palestinian street, stressing he would not place any obstacle to any future attempt to hold local elections and he would be committed to their results.
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