JERUSALEM – Proponents of a new Middle East peace process received a jolt of hope Sunday as Palestinians elected Mahmoud Abbas, an anti-violence moderate, as their new president.

Abbas, a former prime minister and close aide to the late leader Yasser Arafat, won an estimated 66 percent of the vote, according to exit polls. The election, however, was marred by serious complications that international observers blamed on Israeli obstacles and Palestinian disorganization.

Final results of the election, contested by seven candidates after Arafat’s death on Nov. 11, are not expected until later today. But celebratory gunfire erupted around the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip as soon as the exit poll results were released.

Election officials described the turnout as moderate among the 1.1 million eligible Palestinian voters, many of whom honored a boycott call by the militant Islamist group Hamas.

The image presented by the bespectacled Abbas, who favors business suits over combat fatigues, contrasts sharply with the guerrilla-dominated leadership style of Arafat during his three-decade domination of Palestinian politics. Arafat’s failure to halt armed attacks on Israelis led to his diplomatic isolation by Washington and virtual imprisonment in his Ramallah compound by Israel during the last four years of his life.

Abbas, who won U.S. and Israeli support after calling for an end to violence and backing new peace talks, praised the election turnout. He had been hoping for a strong show of support to bolster his negotiating position ahead of expected talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

“The democratic process is running smoothly,” Abbas said after casting his ballot. “The Palestinians are a democratic people.” It was only the second presidential election for the Palestinians, after a 1996 vote in which Arafat faced only token resistance.

Despite Abbas’ praise for the electoral process, serious problems were apparent in largely Arab East Jerusalem as thousands of Palestinians were turned away from Israeli-run polling stations inside government post offices.

Israeli postal service spokeswoman Abir Saada said voters’ names did not appear on registration lists provided by the Palestinian Authority and, therefore, many voters could not cast ballots even if they presented a valid registration slip.

“We only provide the service – the location. The Palestinian Authority provided the lists,” she said.

Former President Jimmy Carter, who was leading a team of international observers, intervened with a phone call to Sharon, who agreed to relax rules so that more East Jerusalem Arabs could participate late in the day.

“It is a complete disaster,” Carter, visibly frustrated, said in an interview after emerging from one East Jerusalem polling station. At the station, only three Palestinians had been permitted to cast their ballots after eight hours of voting. Carter said more than 500 names were on the station’s voting list.

He criticized Israeli restrictions that denied Palestinians the right to administer their own elections in a city claimed by both as their capital.

“The Israelis don’t permit the Palestinians to conduct the elections here unless they are employed by the Israelis in the post office,” he said. “The whole situation in East Jerusalem is very disappointing.”

John Tleel, a 78-year-old Palestinian dentist, was attempting to vote when Carter arrived at the Jaffa Gate polling station. “I was born here in 1928. My family has lived in this neighborhood for 400 years. But the Israelis won’t let me vote here,” he said.

Israel had pledged before the vote to remove military checkpoints, ease transit restrictions and make efforts to ensure that the elections ran smoothly. But in East Jerusalem, which Israel captured in 1967 and annexed as part of its united capital, authorities were reluctant to allow election activities that might suggest the Palestinian government had jurisdiction.

As a result, Israel limited voting access to only six post offices in East Jerusalem, and arrangements were made to accommodate only 6,000 of the 124,000 eligible Palestinian voters there. Voters had to present an Israeli-issued ID card to receive a ballot, which had to be marked in clear view of postal authorities. Voters then had to hand the ballot back to a post office employee, who stuffed the paper into an Israeli mailbox.

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The effect, Palestinians and international observers said, was to strip voters of any direct connection to the government they were electing. Protesters outside the Salahuddin Street post office, the busiest in East Jerusalem, displayed signs that read, “Israel is a banana republic democracy.”

Yunis Abu Sbeh, a shoe merchant, said he cast a blank ballot in protest. “I can’t even put the ballot into the box by myself,” he said. “This is shameful.”

Elsewhere, Palestinians themselves appeared to introduce irregularities that marred the process further. At a busy polling station in the Mount of Olives neighborhood of East Jerusalem, members of Abbas’ Fatah party crowded at the door and chanted his nickname, Abu Mazen, as voters and Carter’s delegation tried to enter. A 4-foot poster of Abbas hung directly over the door.

In the West Bank town of Beit Sahhur, clashes erupted between supporters of Abbas and communist-leaning candidate Bassam Assalhi outside a polling station where Assalhi’s posters adorned the entrance.

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Even among his supporters, it was clear that Palestinians would seek to tightly limit Abbas’ negotiating leeway with Israel. Dozens said in interviews that they would not tolerate any concessions on key demands: establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, removal of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the right of return of refugees uprooted in the 1948 war that established Israel.

“I voted for him, but I don’t trust him or any of the others,” said Sandallah Abu Khalaf, a doctor in the West Bank city of Hebron. “This vote is a test. If Abbas doesn’t do what he has promised, he is finished. … If he doesn’t fulfill our demands, or if he concedes even a little to the Israelis, then he will lose our respect. There won’t be any need to kill him, because he will already be dead in the eyes of the Palestinians.”

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But in Bethlehem, a Christian Palestinian, Johnny Canavati, said the major demands would take years or decades to achieve. “For now, the important thing is to see Abu Mazen and Sharon sitting down and talking to each other,” he said. “It’s a hundred years old, this problem. It’ll take another hundred years to solve it.”

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(c) 2005, The Dallas Morning News.

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PHOTOS (from KRT Photo Service, 202-383-6099): MIDEAST-ELECTION

AP-NY-01-09-05 2042EST

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