Palestinian Authority claims Israel blocked election officials from Jerusalem, Gaza

Israel refused to allow Palestinian election officials access to East Jerusalem or Gaza ahead of legislative polls, according to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa, increasing concerns that the vote will be postponed.

The Palestinian legislative elections are due to take place on November 28, a month after Israel’s own general election, but many Palestinians expect them to be postponed or canceled, as happened in 2021.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, 90, has canceled elections several times in the past that he had previously announced, and has now remained in power for 20 years, 15 years beyond the original date on which he was due to seek reelection. He has since ruled by decree.

“The Israeli government has refused to allow the Central Elections Commission to enter the Gaza Strip and Jerusalem to oversee preparations for the legislative elections,” Wafa news agency reported, citing a Palestinian official.

Neither Israel’s Defense Ministry nor COGAT, its affiliated entity in charge of civilian matters in Palestinian territories, responded to AFP requests for confirmation of the decision to block the officials.

Farid Taamallah, spokesman for the Palestinian Central Elections Commission, told AFP his commission could still hold elections.

“The Commission is continuing to organize the electoral process despite the Israeli decision,” Taamallah said, stating that commission employees in Gaza were already trained and present on the ground.

The European Union, the PA’s main financial backer and a staunch advocate for Palestinian elections, is “ready to deploy” election observers to monitor the elections, top diplomat Kaja Kallas said on Tuesday.

“Palestinians have the right to choose their representatives in elections that are credible, inclusive and transparent,” Kallas posted on X after talking to PA Vice President Hussein al-Sheikh.

In turn, Sheikh called in a post on X for “European support for Palestinian efforts to… overcome any obstacles that might hinder the holding of elections, in a way that guarantees the participation of all members of our people in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.”

Abbas and the PA are under mounting pressure from the United States, the European Union and Arab states to implement reforms and hold elections, amid widespread accusations of corruption, political stagnation, and the body’s declining legitimacy among Palestinians.

The legislative polls face major logistical challenges arising from Israeli measures in the Gaza Strip, as well as in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, which Israel captured in the 1967 Six Day War.

In 2021, Abbas said he was putting off the vote until Israel agreed to allow East Jerusalem Palestinians to participate.

Observers, however, argued that the true rationale was the infighting in Abbas’s Fatah movement and its unpopularity, which raised the specter of defeat to rivals both inside Fatah and outside it, such as Hamas.

At the time, Israel did not publicly take a position on the question of Palestinians voting in East Jerusalem, where it claims sovereignty.

Uncertain schedule

In early September, top Palestinian official Jibril Rajoub told reporters the elections would not be held on time.

Rajoub, secretary-general for Abbas’s dominant Fatah party, said holding presidential elections first “would solve a large part of the problem.”

Fatah rivals, including Hamas and the Democratic Reform Current, a Fatah splinter group, have said they aimed to create joint lists for the election.

An August poll by the Jerusalem Media and Communication Center found that only 29 percent of Palestinians expected the November election to go ahead as scheduled.

The last legislative elections in the Palestinian territories were held in 2006, when Hamas defeated Fatah, which dominates the PA and rules in areas of the West Bank. In a bloody clash the following year, the terror group seized control of the Gaza Strip from the PA and has remained the coastal enclave’s de facto ruler ever since. Efforts to reconcile between Fatah and Hamas have failed, and the two rival groups remain at loggerheads.

As a result, the Palestinian Legislative Council, which is the PA’s parliament, has not met since 2007.

The international community wants the PA to play a key role in eventually running the Gaza Strip again after it was devastated in the war sparked by the October 7, 2023, Hamas invasion of southern Israel.

Israel, however, bitterly opposes the involvement of the PA.