Abbas Pledges First Palestinian Parliamentary Election in 20 Years as Gaza and Fatah Divisions Fuel Doubts
By Shahnoor Saqib — SCN News
UNITED NATIONS— Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told the United Nations on Thursday that legislative elections will go ahead on November 28, promising Palestinians their first parliamentary vote in two decades as he seeks to demonstrate political reform and renewed legitimacy. But deep divisions inside his Fatah movement, uncertainty over voting in war-scarred Gaza and a planned Hamas challenge have raised serious questions over whether the ballot can actually take place.
Abbas made the commitment in a prerecorded address to the 81st United Nations General Assembly from Ramallah after the United States denied him a visa to attend the gathering in New York. The 90-year-old Palestinian leader said his administration had completed a national reform programme promised to Palestinians and the international community and was now moving toward the November election.
The announcement carries unusual political weight. Palestinians have not held legislative elections since January 2006, when Hamas defeated Fatah in a vote that transformed Palestinian politics. Hamas subsequently seized control of Gaza in 2007 after fighting with Fatah, leaving the Palestinian political system geographically and institutionally divided between the Hamas-controlled enclave and the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank.
Abbas himself was elected Palestinian Authority president in 2005. Presidential and parliamentary elections have repeatedly been discussed or promised since then without producing another nationwide ballot. Abbas has decreed that a presidential election should be held in 2027, although no date has yet been set.
That history is one reason the November 28 pledge is being treated cautiously. Even figures within Abbas's own Fatah movement have questioned whether the political and logistical conditions exist for a credible election. Some Fatah officials are demanding dialogue with other Palestinian factions before proceeding, while others point to difficulties getting election materials into Gaza.
The uncertainty is particularly acute in Gaza. Fatah officials say Israel has refused to allow ballot boxes, election papers and ink into the territory, presenting an immediate logistical obstacle to conducting voting there. A Palestinian election excluding Gaza would raise fundamental questions over whether the ballot could serve the broader political purpose Abbas has attached to it: renewing Palestinian institutions and restoring representative government across Palestinian territories.
Fatah itself has yet to announce a candidate list, despite the election calendar moving forward. The Palestinian Central Election Commission is due to begin receiving candidate applications on Saturday, leaving parties and factions with increasingly little time to organise for a vote scheduled just over two months away.
Hamas, meanwhile, says it intends to participate. The group said it is discussing the formation of a coalition with other Palestinian factions to challenge Fatah, including contacts involving former Fatah leader Mohammad Dahlan, who is based in the United Arab Emirates and has long been regarded as a potential rival to the Palestinian leadership.
That prospect gives the election a significance extending beyond Abbas's reform programme. If the ballot proceeds with meaningful participation by Hamas and other factions, it could reopen a competition for political authority that has effectively been frozen for two decades. But it could also expose rather than resolve the divisions that have prevented Palestinians from establishing unified political institutions across Gaza and the West Bank.
International pressure is another important part of Abbas's announcement. The United States has pressed the Palestinian Authority for governance and anti-corruption reforms, while France has explicitly called for both legislative and presidential elections. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said at the UN on Wednesday that Paris would continue pressing Abbas to honour an election commitment made last year to French President Emmanuel Macron and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
France, which recognised a Palestinian state last year, has also advised the Palestinian Authority on preparations for the election and pushed for European Union observers. Barrot said elections were necessary to allow Palestinians to express their aspirations and political voice.
The international push for elections is tied to a broader question hanging over postwar Palestinian governance: who can legitimately represent Palestinians if a political settlement eventually emerges from the conflicts in Gaza and the wider Middle East?
Abbas is seeking to position the Palestinian Authority as the institution capable of governing a future Palestinian state encompassing both the West Bank and Gaza. In his UN address, he said any transitional arrangement should ultimately reunify the two territories under one Palestinian state and a single legitimate armed authority.
That objective remains difficult while Hamas retains political and organisational influence and the Palestinian Authority faces persistent questions about its own public legitimacy. An election could provide a route toward renewing that legitimacy, but only if it is sufficiently inclusive and can actually be implemented across Palestinian territories.
The November vote is therefore about considerably more than choosing members of a legislature. It would test whether Palestinians can rebuild a functioning electoral system after two decades without national elections while confronting territorial fragmentation, war damage, factional rivalry and Israeli restrictions.
Abbas's UN address also placed the election pledge inside a broader diplomatic argument over Palestinian statehood. He called on Washington to lift restrictions imposed on Palestinian officials, resume dialogue with the Palestinian leadership and support international efforts toward a two-state solution.
The Trump administration last week said Palestinian officials would again be denied entry for the UN gathering, extending restrictions imposed last year. Washington has accused the Palestinian leadership of seeking to “internationalize” the conflict with Israel, including through proceedings at international tribunals. Abbas rejected the U.S. measures and said the Palestinian Authority had maintained its commitments to international law and rejected violence and terrorism.
His absence from New York added another layer to Thursday's appearance. Instead of addressing delegates from the General Assembly podium, Abbas appeared on the chamber's screens from Ramallah. He used the address to warn that accelerating Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem was fragmenting Palestinian territory and threatening the possibility of establishing a viable Palestinian state.
Abbas said 160 countries now recognise the State of Palestine and appealed to those that have not done so to follow. His argument was that international recognition must be accompanied by action to preserve the territorial and political basis for a future Palestinian state.
The speech came on a day when the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was again at the centre of UNGA81. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the General Assembly separately, defending Israel's military actions as dozens of delegates staged a walkout. Abbas's appearance presented the competing Palestinian case from Ramallah, combining criticism of Israel with a promise that Palestinian institutions themselves would undergo political renewal.
The election pledge may ultimately become one of the more consequential parts of Abbas's address because it comes with a specific date against which the Palestinian leadership can be judged.
There are now several immediate tests. The Palestinian election authorities must receive and approve candidate lists; Fatah must resolve its internal divisions sufficiently to contest the ballot; Hamas and other factions must determine how they will participate; and practical arrangements would have to allow Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank to vote.
Failure on any of those fronts could derail the process. The Palestinian leadership has previously announced elections that were later postponed, making scepticism about the latest timetable particularly significant.
But the November 28 date also creates political pressure that previous general promises did not. France and other international supporters of Palestinian statehood can now measure Abbas's reform commitments against a fixed electoral deadline, while Palestinian factions must decide whether to prepare seriously for a contest that could reshape the balance of power inside Palestinian politics.
For Hamas, participation presents both an opportunity and a risk. Its victory in the 2006 legislative election was followed by the political rupture with Fatah and the eventual division between Gaza and the West Bank. A new contest would test its political support after years of conflict and enormous destruction in Gaza, while also potentially forcing Palestinian factions to confront questions over political representation and governance that have remained unresolved for two decades.
For Fatah, the challenge is different. Abbas is presenting elections as evidence that the Palestinian Authority can reform itself and renew its democratic mandate. Yet internal disagreement and the absence so far of an announced candidate list demonstrate that the movement itself is not entering the election from a position of complete unity.
That makes November 28 simultaneously a promise of political renewal and a test of whether the Palestinian system is capable of delivering it.
Abbas has now publicly committed before the United Nations to the first Palestinian legislative election in 20 years. Whether Palestinians actually reach the ballot box will depend on overcoming the same territorial divisions, factional rivalries and political constraints that have prevented another national parliamentary vote since 2006.