by Saud Abu Ramadan, Wei Jianhua

    GAZA, Jan. 9 (Xinhuanet) -- Mustafa el Gharabli woke up in the morning, had breakfast with his wife and three children and then walked to a nearby voting center at al Sheja'ey a neighborhood in Gaza City to cast his vote for choosing a new Palestinian leader. It is an ordinary sunny day in the Gaza Strip. However, it is a historic day for the 419,000 Gazans aged over 18 as they headed to the polling stations for electing a new Palestinian leader tosucceed late Yasser Arafat, who died last November at a Frenchhospital.

    As soon as Gharabli, 55, his wife Amal and their two sons and one daughter, all registered for the elections, arrived at the voting station in a school, two police officers checked their IDs. The election staffers found their names in a list of the registered voters and put the non-removable ink on each of their thumb to avoid fraud.

    Then each one of them took the voting paper, got into the booths devoted for voting, and dropped their votes into a transparent plastic box in a room where six local and foreign observers were monitoring the voting process.

    After that, the Gharabli family went back home to watch television and enjoy the lovely Sunday which was officially announced to be a day off in the Palestinian territories." Thanks God. It is a very nice day. We voted and we have to wait for the results. I hope that Mahmoud Abbas (PLO chairman and Fatah candidate) will be the winner," said the father, who works as a teacher in a secondary school in Gaza City.

    He said that he and his wife voted for Abbas, or better known asAbu Mazen, adding jokingly "I'm not sure if my children voted forAbu Mazen, or for someone else."

    "Of course we voted for Abu Mazen, he is our leader who would make changes in our life and end our suffering. This is what he promised us in his election campaign, this is why we voted for him," said Abdel Kareem, one of his two sons.

    The voting began at 7:00 a.m. (0500 GMT) and is scheduled to last for 12 hours throughout the occupied Palestinian territories -- the Gaza Strip, West Bank and east Jerusalem. The time for voting might be extended if there are not enough people voting.

    A total of seven candidates are running for the presidential election.

    Recent polls showed that Abbas, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization and candidate of the mainstream Fatah faction, is likely to win the election.

    "Everything was fine, the process went smoothly and there were no problems," said a resident in the central Gaza Strip town of Deir el Ballah.

    In Rafah town on the border with Egypt, official figures said that 51,910 Palestinians who are over 18 years old would head to106 ballots to vote.

    "We didn't expect to see a huge number of Palestinians participating in the elections. It is a democratic process and everything goes in calmness," said Yahya el Farra, mayor of the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis.

    Palestinian official figures said that about 1.8 million Palestinians will be heading to the ballots on Sunday in 16election districts, 11 in the West Bank and east Jerusalem and five in the Gaza Strip.

    All the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) officials, including Abbas, interim PNA chairman Rawhi Fatouh, Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei and former security official Mohamed Dahlan, voted in areas where they live.

    Abbas, a moderate Palestinian leader advocating non-violent struggle for an independent state and favored as a partner for peace talks by Israel and the United States, cast his vote at the Muqata headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah." The Palestinian people had just started heading towards democracy," Abbas told reporters at al Muqataa, the PNA headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah after he voted there Sunday.

    "I'm happy because I practiced my right to vote," he said. "The elections are going fine without any obstacle, and our people are going through the right direction, which is democracy," he added.

    The obstacles that the Israeli government is putting "still existed, but the will of our people are stronger than their obstacles," said Abbas. Enditem