Abbas postpones Palestinian legislative elections to September 2027
The Legislative Council vote set for 28 November will now be held alongside the presidential election on 11 September 2027. Palestinians last voted in 2006.
Graphic: TERRA WORLD NEWS (own graphic based on the sources listed)
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has postponed elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council – the first in nearly 20 years – by almost a year. According to the official Wafa news agency, the vote originally scheduled for 28 November 2026 will now take place together with the presidential election on 11 September 2027. The presidential vote had been expected in early 2027. A committee of senior Palestinian officials met on Saturday morning before the decree was issued.
The PLO Executive Committee, which Abbas heads, and Wafa said conditions in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza did not allow for elections. Reasons cited included Israel not allowing election materials or international observers into Gaza, Israeli military raids, settlement expansion and settler violence, the withholding of Palestinian tax revenues, and slow progress on Gaza's reconstruction and on deploying an international stabilisation force.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on Friday that Abbas was "fooling the international community" by planning to cancel the promised elections. In the last parliamentary vote, in 2006, Hamas defeated Fatah; the ensuing split led to Hamas taking control of Gaza. Abbas, 90, won the last presidential election in 2005; his term should have ended in 2009, and he has ruled by decree since then.