“Governments don’t have the right to shut down news outlets just because they dispute the accuracy of a story,” said CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa Coordinator Sherif Mansour. “The Hamas government should immediately allow Al-Arabiya and Maan to resume their operations.”

Ismail Jaber, the attorney general, said the outlets reported “fabricated news” that “threatened civil peace and damaged the Palestinian people and their resistance” to Israel, according to a statement published by the Hamas government’s media office today. Jaber described the shutdown as temporary, although the order did not specify when the offices will be allowed to resume operations.

Maan, headquartered in the West Bank, and Al-Arabiya, based in Saudi Arabia, often carry critical coverage of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Hamas statement cited an article that Maan published on Wednesday that said Muslim Brotherhood leaders had fled to Gaza to organize activities in support of ousted Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi. The article cited Israeli sources. In a report on Maan’s website, Nasser Lahham, the agency’s editor-in-chief, stood by the agency’s story.

The statement did not specify a particular Al-Arabiya article, but The New York Times said that Al-Arabiya had reported a similar story. Al-Arabiya said on Thursday that security forces had told its staff that anyone who tried to work in the office would be arrested.

Hamas authorities also shut down Lens, a local Palestinian media production company, on Thursday, according to news reports. The New York Times cited an anonymous Lens employee who said that the Hamas government had shut it down because it allegedly worked with i24, a new Israeli satellite station launched this month looking to emulate the success of global broadcasters like Al-Jazeera. Palestinian journalists in Gaza are barred from working with Israeli media.

Al-Hamadallah, a linguistics professor of Nablus’ Al-Najah University, was assigned by Abbas at a meeting at his headquarters in Ramallah Sunday to form a new government, adding that Al-Hamdallah accepted the designation.

“President Abbas has asked me to form a new government and I have accepted,” Hamdallah, 54, a member of Abbas’s Fatah party who has also headed the Palestinian Stock Exchange, told the AFP news agency.

“The government will be formed in the coming days. Most ministers of the outgoing government will stay and I will bring in a new finance minister,” he added.

This move follows the resignation of former government’s Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in April after months of tension with Abbas.

Hamdallah, received a PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Lancaster in the United Kingdom and has been president of An-Najah University since 1998. He has also served as the secretary general of the  central elections commission since 2002.

In the wake of Fayyad’s resignation, Haaretz reported the leading candidates to replace him were Hamdallah and Mohammad Mustafa, head of the national investment fund but according to sources close to Abbas told Haaretz Sunday night that Mustafa would probably be appointed Hamdallah’s deputy.

Hamdallah’s appointment comes as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry last week urged Israelis and Palestinians to renew peace negotiations.

Officials say the majority of the group’s Shura council members voted for him.

Mashaal had previously indicated he would not seek another term, but officials told Maan news agency that Arab and Palestinian figures asked him to seek the top spot once again.

The 56-year-old has headed the political bureau of Hamas since 1996.

His re-election could revive stalled reconciliation efforts between Hamas and political rival Mahmoud Abbas, AP says.

Hamas seized the Gaza Strip in 2007, leaving Abbas with a self-rule government, the Palestinian Authority, in parts of the West Bank. Both sides have become entrenched in their territories, hampering reconciliation.

Meshaal, set foot in Gaza for the first time in December since leaving the West Bank in 1967.

Meshaal ran the group from exile in Damascus from 2004 a few months before he left the Syrian capital because of unrest in Syria and to avoid pressure from Syrian authorities to side himself with President bashar al-Assad, according to sources. He now divides his time between Qatar and Cairo.

Hamas continues with its view that it will not recognize the Jewish state officially, and it is viewed as a terrorist group by Israel, the United States and most Western governments.

Around half a million Palestinians on Saturday went to cast their vote to elect 93 municipal councils in the West Bank, according to Maan news agency. The final results are due by Oct. 23.

However, voting did not take place in the Gaza Strip, which is controlled by Hamas. Hamas boycotted Saturday’s election, saying persecution of its members would prevent a fair vote.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, whose Fatah party governs the West Bank, cast his vote and said that he hoped elections in the future would take place as well in Gaza and Jerusalem “to complete our joy”.

Hamas, which took full control of Gaza in 2007 after winning parliamentary elections in 2006, is considered a terrorist organization by Israel and the U.S. East Jerusalem, which is sought by the Palestinians as the capital of any future state, is governed by Israel.

The continued divide between Hamas and Fatah worries Palestinians who fear that without Gaza’s participation the split between Palestinians will deppen and will undermine their struggle for an independent state.

According to the election commission’s statement, more than 7, 000 observers, including 130 international observers are supervising the elections, Xinhua reported. .

UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Robert Serry, who is visiting polling stations in Ramallah, said the vote is important and will give citizens a role in decisions that affect their lives.

The vote comes amid mounting problems for Abbas. In recent months, PA Prime Minister  Fayyad has had difficulty paying the salaries of civil servants and members of the security forces, a backbone of the small Palestinian economy, according to Maan news agency. In September, thousands of people took to the streets to protest rising food prices and delayed salary payments by the aid dependent country.

Registration to run in municipal elections ended at midnight Tuesday and six blocs submitted lists to run in Hebron with the women-only bloc running against lists from Fatah, leftist factions, the Palestinian National Initiative and independents, according to Maan news.

Maysoon Qawasmi, a journalist for the Palestinian news agency Wafa, which also holds training sessions to empower Palestinian women in the West Bank heads the group. Maysoon tells AP that in traditional Palestine women stay at home or do tradiitonal jobs like teaching if they work
. “But we want them to go further, to work like men in all possible jobs they can, ” the 43-year old woman added.

In fact, in the West Bank just 16 per cent of women are employed, and in Hebron this falls to a meager 10 per cent.If the group are elected she has vowed  to open women-only sports clubs and other facilities that are sure to be poorly received by many of Hebron’s conservative Muslims, she tells the Associated Press. The Oct. 20 vote will be the first municipal elections in 35 years, and nearly 60,000 residents are eligible to vote for 15 seats in the council.

“We will go to the UN General Assembly for consultations with our friends on the draft resolution calling for the upgrade of Palestine (to non-member status)” in the United Nations, Mr Abbas said in a televised speech in Ramallah.

“We are going to the UN to say that we are a state which applies the fourth Geneva convention. There are 133 countries that recognise us as a state with east Jerusalem as its capital and where we have embassies raising the Palestinian flag.”

The Palestinians are currently a UN observer “entity” with no voting rights. PA minister of Foreign Affairs Riyad al- Malki told reporters last month that Mahmoud Abbas will ask for non-member observer status at the U.N General Assembly in his speech in late September, an upgrade they expect to establish the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in 1967, as Palestinian territories.

A simple majority vote in the 193-member General Assembly would be enough to grant Palestinians non-member observer status, bypassing the Security Council where the United States, Israel’s ally, has previously threatened to veto the bid.

The United States and Israel argue that a Palestinian state can only be established in negotiations with Israel. However, Israeli-Palestinian have been stalled since 2008.

A few weeks ago,Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) executive committee member, Saleh Raafat, said Washington was pressuring the Palestinian leadership to postpone its upgrade plans until after the US elections in November.

Meanwhile, Abbas held the Hamas Islamist group ruling Gaza responsible for the failure of national reconciliation efforts during his speech.  “Reconciliation means elections, and wanting to establish an independent emirate in Gaza is not going to work,” Abbas said.

He added that those who dealt with Haniyeh as a prime minister were deepening divisions among the Palestinians, the PA president said. “Ismail Haniyeh is not the prime minister,” he said, referring to Haniyeh’s visit to Mohamed Mursi in Cairo.

During his speech Abbas also said that government employees would not receive full salaries in October because donor countries have not delivered promised aid they have promised, leaving the Palestinian Authority that governs much of the West Bank in a budgetary shortfall that has contributed to rising prices and delays in the payment of government salaries, according to Haaretz. The economic situation has sparked demonstrations in the West Bank.

Yasser Arafat, who died in 2004, may have lost his life as a result of polonium poisoning, according to a study ordered by Al Jazeera.

On Tuesday, Al Jazeera said the Swiss Institut de Radiophysique has proof that Arafat’s personal belongings contained abnormal levels of a radioactive element that is extremely toxic called polonium.

Dr Francois Bochud of the institute was quoted as saying “an unexplained, elevated amount of unsupported polonium-210″ was found on Arafat’s toothbrush and iconic kuffiya.

French doctors who treated Arafat in his final days could not identify the cause of death refusing to give details of his condition, citing privacy laws,stirring rumors and theories over the nature of his illness, according to Maan new agency. 

The scientists said they needed to exhume Arafat’s body to examine his bones and the soil from the grave in order to prove he was poisoned from polonium.

Fatah’s governing body said the Palestinian leadership is ready to cooperate with all sides to determine the circumstances surrounding the death of President Yasser Arafat, after revelations prompted his widow to call for his body to be exhumed, Maan new agency reported.

Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip, called on the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority to form a national committee to resume investigations in Arafat’s death in 2004.