Palestinians vote in first elections since Gaza war

Ramallah: Palestinians in the West Bank and a central area of Gaza began voting Saturday in municipal elections in the first vote since the Gaza war, marked by a narrow political field and widespread disillusionment.

Nearly 1.5 million people are registered to vote in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, as well as 70,000 people in Gaza’s Deir el-Balah area, according to the Ramallah-based Central Elections Commission.

Polling stations opened at 7 am (0400 GMT).

AFP footage from Al-Bireh in the West Bank and Deir el-Balah in Gaza showed election officials in polling stations as Palestinians came to cast ballots.

Most electoral lists are aligned with president Mahmud Abbas’s secular-nationalist Fatah party or feature candidates running as independents.

There are no lists affiliated with Fatah’s archrival Hamas, which controls nearly half of the Gaza Strip.

In most cities, Fatah-backed tickets will run against independent lists headed by candidates from factions such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (Marxist-Leninist).

“We must see change every four years through elections… We can’t change the situation but we hope to replace people… people who might be better and help develop the community,” said Khalid Eid, 55, after he voted in Al-Bireah.

Municipal councils are responsible for basic services such as water, sanitation and local infrastructure and do not enact legislation.

The Palestinian Authority faces widespread criticism over corruption, stagnation and declining legitimacy.

Western and regional donors have increasingly tied financial and diplomatic support to visible reforms, particularly at the local governance level, as national elections remain frozen.

With no presidential or legislative elections held since 2006, municipal councils have become one of the few functioning democratic institutions under PA administration.

UN coordinator Ramiz Alakbarov commended the election commission for organising a “credible process”.

“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 the polls.

Mahmud Bader, a businessman from the northern West Bank city of Tulkarem, where two adjacent refugee camps have been under Israeli military control for over a year, said he would vote despite having little hope for meaningful change.

“Whether candidates are independent or partisan, it has no effect and will have no effect or benefit for the city,” he told AFP on Friday.

“The (Israeli) occupation is the one that rules Tulkarem. It would only be an image shown to the international media — as if we have elections, a state or independence.”

Polling stations in the West Bank will close at 7 pm, while polls in Deir el-Balah will close at 5 pm to facilitate counting in daylight due to the lack of electricity in the war-devastated strip, the elections commission told AFP.

Two years of war that started in October 2023 have left swathes of Gaza destroyed and more than 72,000 people dead, according to the territory’s health ministry, whose figures are considered reliable by the UN.

Public infrastructure, sanitation services and the health sector are struggling to function.

– ‘Strong determination’ –

Gaza, which has been under Hamas control since 2007, is holding its first vote since legislative elections of 2006 that the Islamist movement won.

The Palestinian Authority is holding elections only in Deir el-Balah “as an experiment (to test its own) success or failure, since there are no post-war opinion polls”, Jamal al-Fadi, a political scientist at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, told AFP.

Deir el-Balah was chosen as it was one of the only places in Gaza where “the population has remained largely in place and not been displaced” by more than two years of war between Hamas and Israel, Fadi said.

The election commission has recruited polling staff from civil society organisations and hired “a private security company to secure polling centres” for the Gaza vote, its spokesman Fareed Taamallah told AFP.

Mohammed al-Hasayna, 24, said after voting in Deir el-Balah that although the elections were largely symbolic, they served as a sign of people’s “will to live”.

“We are an educated people with strong determination, and we deserve to have our own state,” he told AFP.

“We want the world to help us overcome the catastrophe of war. Enough wars — it is time to work towards rebuilding Gaza.”