Israeli police blocked Palestinians from electioneering in Arab East Jerusalem today when campaigning began for parliamentary polls, highlighting a dispute threatening a delay in the vote.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Monday the January 25 polls, widely seen as a referendum on his rule after Israel's Gaza pullout last year raised hopes of ending years of conflict, would not take place if Israel barred voting in East Jerusalem.
In Washington, US President George W. Bush's administration said it hoped the polls would be held on schedule and urged Israel to let Palestinians in East Jerusalem vote.
Israel has threatened to bar balloting in East Jerusalem, which it annexed in the 1967 Middle East war in a move not recognised internationally, because of the candidacy of Hamas, a group bent on Israel's destruction.
Jerusalem has been at the heart of the Middle East conflict, and Palestinians want East Jerusalem as capital of a state they hope to build in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
Israeli police beat some Palestinian campaigners with clubs and arrested seven, including a local leader of Abbas's Fatah movement.
Police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said those arrested had been questioned for "illegal activity by the Palestinian Authority in Jerusalem" before being freed on bail.