Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas postponed the first Palestinian legislative elections in 20 years — previously scheduled for November — to September 2027, with the presidential election set for the same time. It was the second time in five years Abbas had delayed Palestinian elections.
Abbas issued the decree Saturday and blamed deteriorating conditions in the Palestinian territories, Israeli restrictions obstructing the elections, and the security and humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip for the delay. In July, he had scheduled the legislative elections in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip for Nov. 28.
The vote would have been the first since Hamas won legislative elections in 2006 and took control of the Gaza Strip the following year. Abbas postponed the last scheduled elections in 2021.
Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, both designated terrorist organizations by the United States, used the run-up to these elections to draw closer to Mohammed Dahlan, a former Fatah security official who now lives in the United Arab Emirates and maintains extensive ties in Washington and Israel. The emerging alliance is widely viewed as a challenge to Abbas.
On Thursday, MBN reported that the Palestinian Authority was likely to postpone the legislative elections.
The announcement comes just before an Oct. 13 deadline to register electoral lists. Only nine lists had been submitted, according to the Central Elections Commission.
A meeting in Cairo
Fatah Central Committee Secretary-General Jibril Rajoub and committee member Mohammad Shtayyeh met with representatives of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Cairo on Wednesday. The PFLP is also designated a terrorist organization by the United States.
Two Palestinian officials told Reuters that Fatah and other faction leaders agreed at the Cairo meeting to postpone the elections.
The talks took place amid a dispute over who could run at all. Under Abbas’s election rules, every candidate must commit to the Palestine Liberation Organization as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and to its political program, which includes recognizing Israel, a negotiated two-state solution and renouncing armed struggle. Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the PFLP have long rejected those positions, effectively barring them from the ballot unless they sign on.
Mustafa Barghouti, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative (PNI), told MBN that the postponement decision was an “agreement among some Palestinian factions, not all Palestinian forces,” and stressed that the Palestinian National Initiative had not participated in the consultations.
Barghouti is a political rival of Abbas and lost to him in the last presidential election in 2005. The PNI also rejects Abbas’s election rules for participation.
Postponing the elections once again was “regrettable,” Barghouti said, adding that announcing elections without first holding an internal national dialogue had been a “major mistake.” He said the PNI and several other political forces had called for such a dialogue.
Legislative limbo
The Palestinian Legislative Council has been inactive since 2007, and the Supreme Constitutional Court issued a ruling dissolving it in 2018.
Since the council ceased functioning, Abbas has governed the Palestinian Authority through presidential decrees that serve in place of legislation, an arrangement the postponement now extends almost another year.
Approximately 2.97 million Palestinians would have been eligible to vote, including around 1.59 million in the West Bank, 1.24 million in the Gaza Strip and approximately 140,000 holders of Jerusalem identity cards.
