Abbas postponed Palestinian elections to September 2027, decree blames the occupation while Hamas calls the delay a step in the right direction

Mahmoud Abbas issued a presidential decree on October 10 postponing the Palestinian legislative and presidential elections, which had been scheduled for November, until September 2027. The official justification cites the need for appropriate political, security and on-the-ground conditions for free and fair elections, and obstacles imposed by the Israeli occupation. Hamas called the postponement a step in the right direction.

The Authority has governed without a fresh mandate since the 2006 legislative elections, and the previous attempt at a vote was cancelled in 2021. Gaza's residents have now gone more than two decades without casting a ballot. Reactions in the Strip are divided: some argue that conditions after the war do not permit elections, others that the decision marginalises Gaza's role in determining its own political future.

Fadi al-Sheikh Youssef, who heads a youth-led electoral list that had prepared to contest the November vote, called the decree an unjust and direct denial of the Palestinian people's democratic right. If the occupation imposed obstacles, he argued, the elections should have become a political battle fought by all parties against it — an opportunity to expose the falsity of Israeli claims to respect Palestinian political participation. He read the postponement as an agreement among the existing parties to reproduce the same political landscape, one that keeps new groups out of politics.

Hamas, for its part, cited the absence of conditions for free elections across the occupied territories, including Jerusalem, and offered to join dialogue on reorganising Palestinian institutions — the National Council and the Legislative Council in particular. The faction that governs Gaza and the faction that governs the West Bank agree on the one point in question: no vote for now.

The Authority's budget rests on foreign donors and on tax revenues that Israel collects on its behalf, funds that can be frozen at any time. It is this Authority that is slated to administer postwar Gaza. Its last legislative mandate expired in 2006. The next chance to renew it is scheduled for September 2027.