Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has postponed legislative elections that were due next month, issuing a decree to delay the vote by nearly a year and combining it with a presidential election set for September 11, 2027.
The announcement was reported Saturday by Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency. The long-awaited parliamentary vote had originally been scheduled for November 28, with a presidential election expected in early 2027.
The decree came after a committee of senior Palestinian officials met Saturday morning to discuss postponing the vote. The Palestine Liberation Organization's Executive Committee, which Abbas heads, said in a statement that conditions in occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were not conducive to holding elections.
The committee cited Israeli military raids, settlement expansion and settler violence in the occupied West Bank as factors making a fair vote in November impossible. It also noted that Israel had not allowed election materials or international observers to enter Gaza, and had withheld Palestinian tax revenues and restricted electoral candidates from accessing Gaza and occupied East Jerusalem.
The lack of progress on reconstruction in Gaza and on deploying an international stabilisation force were also cited as contributing factors.
The postponement would make this the latest in a long series of delays to Palestinian elections. The last parliamentary elections in the Palestinian territories were held in 2006, when Hamas defeated Fatah, which dominates the Palestinian Authority. The split led to factional fighting, and Hamas later seized control of Gaza.
Abbas, who is 90 years old, won the last presidential election in 2005. His term was due to end in 2009, but he has ruled by decree since then. In June, he signed a decree calling for a presidential election to be held in early 2027.
A source told a news agency on Thursday that Palestinian factions, including Abbas's Fatah party, had agreed to hold a national dialogue before legislative elections and that they wanted to postpone the vote.
On Friday, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar accused Abbas of "fooling the international community" by planning to cancel the promised elections.
The postponement leaves entrenched Palestinian leaders unchallenged and threatens to further erode the Palestinian Authority's credibility among Palestinians and the donor countries that fund it.
Mustafa Barghouti, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative party, said there was great disappointment among the Palestinian people over the decision.
"At this moment, everything is concentrated in the hands of the executive authority," he said. "There is no independent judiciary, no parliament, that can issue laws and legislations," Barghouti added, calling it "totally unacceptable" that Palestinians had been denied elections for two decades. "There is a great need for reform from the perspective of the Palestinian people."
