Under the presidential decrees issued on the matter of the Palestinian elections, they have been postponed twice: the first time in May 2021, only days before the vote, and the second in October 2026.
The first postponement was made on the pretext that Israel would not agree to holding them in Jerusalem, as had been the case in the 2006 elections. The second was made under the decree, with Israeli obstructions as its justification.
In practice, however, the postponement has not happened twice but more often than that, since twenty years have passed since the last legislative elections without any being held- even though the circumstances were favorable, when Gaza was not destroyed and the West Bank was not under a double occupation as it is now.
Postponing the elections formally and by decree twice, and refraining from making them periodic and regular over twenty years, have led to a severe erosion of Palestinian legitimacy, to a paralysis of leadership and representation, and to the dissolution of the Palestinian political class's credibility, on both the governing and the opposition sides.
A question laced with bitterness circulates in the Palestinian street: when Gaza was subjected to comprehensive destruction and the West Bank to a double occupation, the Palestinian factions did not unite and the division remained in place; but they united on postponing the elections once those appeared dangerous to their own existence. This means that narrow factional interests have been placed ahead of national interests, which will further erode legitimacy and credibility.
The Palestinian public was enthusiastic about general elections, renewing its voter registration at a rate of 90 percent, regarding general elections as a powerful instrument of struggle- not only against the occupation and its settlement and annexationist programs, but for restoring the unity of the homeland's two wings, through an elected parliament bringing together all the forces and segments of Palestinian society.
Replacing legislative and presidential elections with factional accords and understandings sent an extremely negative message to the world, which had regarded the legislative elections as a fundamental step toward renewing the Authority. Their postponement amounted to a setback for the comprehensive reform process the Authority had begun, in which the legislative and presidential elections were to be the most important democratic culmination.
On the balance of gains and losses, what had been an effective prescription for ending the division and restoring national unity- consensus on elections- has, through postponement, produced an additional division, factional and popular alike. It has turned general elections, which in the public's consciousness and expectations had been a solution to fundamental problems, among them ending the division, into a problem in themselves.
When we pause at length over the obstructions the Authority invoked for the postponement, and its tying the holding of elections to their removal, a year is not enough- even if Netanyahu, Smotrich, Ben Gvir, and Katz are absent from the Israeli scene after the imminent elections, since there are no guarantees that a new government will make elections possible in a destroyed and occupied Gaza, or facilitate them in the West Bank and Jerusalem as it did on previous occasions.
The Authority and the factions were hasty in taking the step of postponement, and in replacing elections with a comprehensive dialogue conducted by the very forces that have been talking to one another for twenty years without result. The Authority and the factions should have continued working to hold the legislative elections on schedule; and if Israel exercised its obstructions in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem- as it certainly will- then let it bear the responsibility for preventing Palestinians from exercising their self-evident right to elect their representatives, through the finest of democratic means. In that case it would be Israel, having obstructed the elections, that stands condemned.
