Abbas postpones Palestinian legislative elections to September 2027

What the report says

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has delayed long-promised legislative elections again, pushing the Palestinian Legislative Council vote to September 11, 2027 and pairing it with a presidential election, according to a decree reported by Al Jazeera and the official Palestinian news agency Wafa. The parliamentary ballot had been planned for November 28, 2026, and would have been the first Palestinian election in nearly two decades.

The decision followed a meeting of senior Palestinian officials on Saturday to review whether voting could proceed. The PLO Executive Committee said conditions in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza were not suitable, citing Israeli restrictions on election materials and international observers, along with military raids, settlement activity and settler violence in the West Bank. Wafa also reported concerns about tax revenue withholding and the lack of progress on Gaza reconstruction and an international stabilisation force.

The postponement keeps Abbas and other established leaders in place and may deepen criticism of the Palestinian Authority, which relies in part on donor support. It also comes amid continued political division between Abbas’s Fatah movement and Hamas, after Hamas won the last parliamentary elections in 2006 and took control of Gaza. Abbas, now 90, won the last presidential election in 2005 and has governed largely by decree since his term expired in 2009.