Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has done it again. On October 10, he announced that elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), originally scheduled for November 2026, will be postponed until September 11, 2027. No date had been set for a presidential election.
The decision came as no surprise to Palestinians familiar with Abbas’s record. It was not the first time that the Palestinian leader had announced elections, raised expectations, and then postponed the vote.
The postponement of the elections presents a contradiction. On one hand, holding elections under the current circumstances would almost certainly strengthen Hamas, the Iran-backed Islamist terrorist organization that won the 2006 PLC elections and violently seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007.
On the other hand, Abbas’s decision cannot be mistaken for a genuine effort to reform anything in Palestinian politics. The Palestinian Authority (PA) leader has repeatedly postponed elections, remained in office long after his mandate expired, and presided over a political system without a functioning legislature.
Even if Hamas would benefit from elections, Abbas’s indefinite rule is still a message that he has no intention of instituting reforms of any kind.
The ostensible postponement also does not absolve the Palestinian Authority of responsibility for creating a political system in which Palestinians lack a credible, democratic alternative to Fatah and Hamas.
In 2021, Abbas cancelled elections at the last minute, blaming Israel’s alleged refusal to allow voting in Jerusalem. This time, he is again blaming Israel by citing military operations, settlement expansion, restrictions on movement, and obstacles to holding PA elections in the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem.
The latest explanation, however, goes beyond Israel. According to the official PA news agency WAFA, Abbas’s decision also “aims to provide an opportunity for comprehensive national dialogue to strengthen unity and address challenges facing the electoral process.”
In other words, after more than two decades in power, Abbas still needs more time to reach agreement with other Palestinian factions, including Hamas.
How much more time does he need?
Abbas’s latest maneuver vindicates the concerns raised by some Palestinians.
While elections can be important, they can also be bogus, faked, or even harmful, as one can see in Russia, Turkey or Iran.
Elections do not mean there is a democracy, especially if they take place before any reforms. Elections are needed after the institutions of democracy — freedom of speech and of the press, the separation of powers, freedom of religion or from religion, due process, equal justice under the law — meaning accountability for everyone, property rights, rights for women, children and laborers, an independent judiciary, and so on — have been set in place and are smoothly functioning. Only then can there be elections that mean anything.
What is really needed to help the Palestinian people, now being held hostage by corrupt and self-serving leaders in all of their parties, is not just elections but reforms, all of them, and serious international accountability, starting with shutting down funding for slow or nonexistent compliance.
So far, the international community has been funding leaders who mistreat their own people first, then their neighbors and everyone else second. For the sake of the Palestinians, this has to stop.
That warning has become even more relevant. The postponement demonstrates that announcing elections is easy; allowing Palestinians to exercise a meaningful choice and hold their leaders accountable is another matter entirely.
Abbas’s latest decision is particularly humiliating for Western governments that have been urging the Palestinian Authority leadership to reform its institutions and renew its political legitimacy.
On October 13, the foreign ministers of Australia, France, Canada, and Britain issued a joint statement expressing “deep regret” over the postponement. They warned that the decision would further erode public confidence in democratic institutions and called on the PA to reconsider its decision and hold elections without further delay.
“Credible elections are an important element of the commitment that President Abbas and the Palestinian Authority made to reform, including democratic renewal and accountable governance,” the ministers of the four countries said in their statement.
