Atmosphere
After polls closed, officials and observers called the vote "peaceful"; Edward McMillan-Scott, the British Conservative head of the European Parliament's monitoring team described the polls as "extremely professional, in line with international standards, free, transparent and without violence". His colleague, Italian Communist MEP Luisa Morgantini said there was "a very professional attitude, competence and respect for the rules." All polling stations closed on time (7 p.m.) except for East Jerusalem, where voting was extended by the permitted two extra hours. Hamas protested this extension, claiming it only served Fatah; the Central Elections Committee stated that voting hours were "extended upon the approval of the Israeli authorities due to lengthy queues as a result of obstructions by post office workers."
The militant Islamist group Islamic Jihad called on Palestinians to boycott the election.
Read more about this topic: Palestinian Legislative Election, 2006, Results
Famous quotes containing the word atmosphere:
“We must be generously willing to leave for a time the narrow boundaries in which our individual lives are passed ... In this fresh, breezy atmosphere ... we will be surprised to find that many of our familiar old conventional truths look very queer indeed in some of the sudden side lights thrown upon them.”
—Bertha Honore Potter Palmer (1849–1918)
“All sound heard at the greatest possible distance produces one and the same effect, a vibration of the universal lyre, just as the intervening atmosphere makes a distant ridge of earth interesting to our eyes by the azure tint it imparts to it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The man who, from the beginning of his life, has been bathed at length in the soft atmosphere of a woman, in the smell of her hands, of her bosom, of her knees, of her hair, of her supple and floating clothes, ... has contracted from this contact a tender skin and a distinct accent, a kind of androgyny without which the harshest and most masculine genius remains, as far as perfection in art is concerned, an incomplete being.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)