RAMALLAH, West Bank, 5 September 2004 — The Palestinian Authority pledged yesterday to try to hold long-delayed elections in 2005, while Israel pressed its threatened onslaught against Hamas with an airstrike in Gaza and West Bank raids.

Yasser Arafat and senior election officials announced at the Palestinian leader’s battered headquarters here that the Palestinian Authority aimed to hold simultaneous presidential, parliamentary and municipal elections next spring.

“We are proud of our Palestinian democracy and it’s an honor for me to register,” said Arafat as he kicked off a voter registration drive which included setting up 1,000 voter registration offices across the occupied territories.

“It’s the occupation that’s stopped us from holding until now the elections that all Palestinians want,” Arafat said, appealing to the international community for help in organizing the polls. The 75-year-old Arafat has been facing mounting calls for reform of his administration amid rampant corruption and a breakdown in security.

Militant groups upset at graft in his Palestinian Authority in July launched an unprecedented spate of kidnappings and arson attacks on government buildings. Arafat, confined to his Ramallah headquarters by the Israeli Army since December 2001, has been boycotted by the United States as well as Israel as corrupt and an “obstacle” to the Middle East peace process.

The wider international community has called on him to share power. In the face of the heavy international pressure to reform, Arafat last year set January 20, 2003, as an initial target date for the first major elections since 1996. That timetable was abandoned when the electoral commission ruled it was unfeasible in the face of Israel’s continued occupation of major West Bank towns.

The same fate met a June 2004 target date set by Prime Minister Ahmad Qorei last November. Israeli Prime Minster Ariel Sharon’s spokesman, Raanan Gissin, pledged the Jewish state would “not interfere in the elections if the Palestinians decide to hold them, considering it is an internal Palestinian affair.”

Following this week’s deadly double suicide bombing by Hamas, Israeli helicopters swooped down on the Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip in the early hours of yesterday and launched a rocket at a home suspected of being used by Hamas to manufacture weapons and explosive devices.

Palestinian security sources said the building, which was targeted in a similar raid two months ago, was severely damaged, but there were no reports of casualties. Israeli troops also slapped a curfew on four northern West Bank villages near the militant bastion of Jenin and carried out a massive search operation for wanted militants often going house to house.

In the Fara refugee camp, a Palestinian was seriously wounded by Israeli fire. In the town of Tubas, troops were greeted by stone throwing protesters. The Israeli military would only confirm it detained five Hamas activists in the West Bank overnight.

The whole territory has seen intense military activity since Tuesday’s deadly suicide bombings in the southern Israeli city of Beersheva by Hamas which killed 16 people, aside from the bombers from the resistance movement.

In Cairo, Egyptian officials said a meeting with Palestinian officials to discuss security arrangements in the run-up to an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip would be held tomorrow. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit and intelligence chief Omar Suleiman are due to hold talks with Arafat in Ramallah, Abul Gheit said.

The meeting was initially planned for last Wednesday, but was postponed following the double suicide bombing. Tomorrow ‘s meeting is being held to discuss the restructuring of Palestinian security services in the run-up to a planned pullout of Israeli settlers and troops from Gaza next year.

Egypt is keen to prevent chaos developing in neighboring Gaza and has promised to help train Palestinian security services and try to broker a truce between armed factions there.

Qorei failed to persuade groups such as Hamas to agree to a halt to their campaign of attacks against Israel in talks hosted by Cairo late last year but efforts have continued to reach a new such agreement.

Egyptian diplomatic sources say that a reorganization of the Palestinian Authority and of Arafat’s Fatah movement is necessary to open a dialogue with the Palestinian factions.