Palestinians are holding local elections, but hardly anyone is running. Here’s why that matters.
At a polling station for municipal elections in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, 25 April 2026
Qassam Muaddi writes in Mondoweiss on 25 April 2026:
Today, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza were scheduled to vote for new mayors and municipal councils, but in many places, they didn’t.
This year, Palestinian local elections are being boycotted by several key political forces, leading to a complete absence of competing candidates in many cities and towns. Many see this as symptomatic of wider Palestinian society and politics after two years of genocide in Gaza and a brutal Israeli crackdown in the West Bank.
It wasn’t always this way. In previous years, Palestinian municipal elections have reflected the growing dynamism of Palestinian political life and a widespread thirst for democratic practice. It also always stood in contrast to the stagnation of the formal political system. Yet this year, the municipal elections show anything but dynamism, enthusiasm, or even significant public interest.
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The elections law
This year’s municipal elections have shed the “thermometer” quality they once had, largely because most major political forces, apart from Fatah, are sitting them out. The four main leftist opposition parties — the PFLP, the DFLP, the Palestinian People’s Party, and the Palestinian National Initiative — announced in a joint statement that they were boycotting the vote. Hamas did the same in a separate statement. All cited the same reason: a new elections law amended by presidential decree last year.
The law changed key parts of the Palestinian electoral system. Most notably, it introduced an “open lists” model for municipal council elections.