Abbas postpones Palestinian legislative elections to September 2027

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has long governed without confirmation at the ballot box. Photo: Alex Brandon/Pool ap/dpa

By Lisa Schneider, Tel Aviv

Palestinians were originally supposed to go to the polls at the end of November for the first time in roughly 20 years, to elect a new Palestinian Legislative Council — the parliament. But on Saturday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas issued a decree postponing the election. It is now scheduled to take place in September 2027, together with the presidential election.

The decree follows recent talks among various Palestinian factions in Cairo. These include the president's Fatah party, as well as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the PFLP. The latter groups each maintain armed wings that were involved in the massacre of October 7, 2023, in southern Israel. According to reports, the factions had agreed to the postponement.

The decree justifies moving the election by nearly a year as follows: "Continued Israeli military attacks, the expansion of settlements, violence by settlers" in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In addition, "restrictions on freedom of movement and Israel's continued withholding of Palestinian customs revenues bring security, economic, and administrative challenges to the preparation and conduct of elections."

These include, for example, that Israel reportedly has so far been unwilling to allow either the materials needed for the elections or international election observers into Gaza. Similar problems exist in East Jerusalem.

Hamas's Popularity Has Declined

The international community had recently exerted significant pressure on Abbas to finally face the electorate again. A poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) hints at what the result might have looked like. According to the survey, Hamas has lost significant popularity in recent months, with only 24 percent of respondents saying they support it. This puts it level with President Abbas's Fatah party in the poll.

However, about 44 percent of respondents said that neither Hamas nor Fatah deserved to govern. According to PCPSR, this suggests that Palestinians' dissatisfaction is increasingly directed at the political system in general, not just at individual parties.

The Palestinian Authority fundamentally has a legitimacy problem: in the last Legislative Council elections in 2006, Hamas won, a unity government failed, and Hamas eventually took over the Gaza Strip in a brutal coup. Repeated negotiations could not end the conflict. Since then, apart from municipal elections, there has been no confirmation process for those in office. Theoretically, the Legislative Council should be re-elected every four years. Several attempts, such as in 2021, failed.

It is therefore not surprising that pressure is also mounting from within. Analyst and Palestinian opposition politician Samer Sinjilawi writes on X that the decision triggers "frustration" in him, and that "millions of Palestinians share this feeling." He mainly blamed the PFLP and other factions for the postponement of the election. He also called on Abbas to meet with him and the representatives of other electoral lists.

"Our young people have the right to shape their own future," he writes. Perhaps in September of next year.

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