{"id":411301,"date":"2026-04-26T05:38:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-26T05:38:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/411301\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T05:38:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T05:38:13","slug":"palestinians-vote-in-municipal-elections-in-gaza-west-bank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/411301\/","title":{"rendered":"Palestinians vote in municipal elections in Gaza, West Bank"},"content":{"rendered":"

Municipal elections were held Saturday in\u00a0Israeli-occupied West Bank<\/a> and in the Deir el-Balah area of the Gaza Strip<\/a>, the first vote in the Palestinian territories<\/a> since the war in Gaza.<\/p>\n

In the West Bank, nearly 1.5 million people were\u00a0registered to vote, while in Gaza, there were\u00a070,000 eligible voters, according to the Ramallah-based Central Elections Commission.<\/p>\n

Gaza has not held elections since a 2006 legislative vote won by the Islamist group Hamas<\/a>, which violently seized control of the enclave\u00a0from the Palestinian Authority, led by its rival Fatah,\u00a0a year later.<\/p>\n

The West Bank has not held a vote since before the start of the Israel-Hamas war<\/a> in October 2023.<\/p>\n

Voter turnout low in Gaza and West Bank<\/p>\n

Turnout, however, was low, at 22.7% in Deir al-Balah and\u00a053.44% in the West Bank, according to official figures.<\/p>\n

Counting\u00a0began immediately, and results are expected later on Saturday or Sunday, they said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Who are the candidates in the Palestinian elections?<\/p>\n

Most electoral lists in the elections are aligned with President Mahmoud Abbas<\/a>‘s Fatah, a secular-nationalist\u00a0party, or running as independents.<\/p>\n

There are no lists affiliated with Hamas, which still controls the nearly half of the Gaza Strip that is not occupied by Israeli military forces.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, polling\u00a0from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research has shown that\u00a0it is still\u00a0the most popular Palestinian faction in both Gaza and the West Bank.<\/p>\n

In many West Bank\u00a0cities, including Nablus and Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority that the 90-year-old Abbas leads, only one list has been submitted, meaning it wins automatically without needing a vote.<\/p>\n

The vote in the West Bank will elect members of the local councils that supervise\u00a0water, roads and electricity but which do not enact legislation.<\/p>\n

The vote in Gaza is being seen as\u00a0largely symbolic. It is being held only in Deir al-Balah as one of the few areas in the enclave not to have experienced an Israeli ground invasion.<\/p>\n

The Palestinian\u00a0Authority also hopes the election there will help reinforce\u00a0its claim to authority over the territory after its ouster by Hamas\u00a0\u2060in 2007. It has, however, faced allegations of widespread corruption.<\/p>\n

Two years of war that started in October 2023, after Hamas-led terror attacks on Israel that left some 1,200 people dead,\u00a0have destroyed huge swaths of Gaza and killed more than 72,000 people, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, whose figures are considered reliable by the UN and other international organizations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Public infrastructure, sanitation services and the health sector are struggling to function.<\/p>\n

\"Gaza is seeing its first vote in two decadesImage: Eyad Baba\/AFP<\/p>\n

UN deems elections ‘credible’<\/p>\n

UN coordinator Ramiz Alakbarov commended the commission for organizing a “credible process.”<\/p>\n

“Saturday’s elections represent an important opportunity for Palestinians to exercise their democratic rights during an exceptionally challenging period,” Alakbarov said in a statement ahead of polls.<\/p>\n

Voting “reflects the will of the Palestinian people to stay on their land and develop their country,” Fareed Taamallah, a spokesperson for the Elections Commission, said.<\/p>\n

He said, “The\u00a0main idea is to link the West Bank and Gaza politically as one system.\u201d<\/p>\n

Palestinians see uniting the two territories under one government as a vital element\u00a0in any attempt to acheive\u00a0future statehood<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Although Israel’s government is opposed to the idea,\u00a0European and \u200cArab governments broadly support an eventual return of the Palestinian Authority to rule Gaza, along with\u00a0an independent Palestinian state.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Many Palestinians see the vote as a confirmation of their existenceImage: Marco Longari\/AFP<\/p>\n

Taamallah said the commission had not coordinated directly with either Israel or Hamas in organizing the vote in Gaza. Hamas is classified as a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States, Germany and several other countries.\u00a0<\/p>\n

COGAT, the Israeli military body that oversees humanitarian affairs in Gaza, did not respond to questions about whether it would allow election materials in.<\/p>\n

Polling stations in the West Bank will close at 7 p.m. (1600 GMT), while polls in Deir al-Balah will close at 5 p.m. (1400 GMT)\u00a0owing to a lack of electricity in the war-ravaged area.<\/p>\n

Edited by. Sean Sinico and Wesley Dockery<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Municipal elections were held Saturday in\u00a0Israeli-occupied West Bank and in the Deir el-Balah area of the Gaza Strip,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411302,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-411301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}