Loyalists of President Mahmoud Abbas won most races in Palestinian municipal elections, election officials said on Sunday, in a vote that for the first time in nearly two decades included a city in the Gaza Strip run by rival Hamas.
Saturday’s ballot marked the first elections of any kind in Gaza since 2006 and the first Palestinian polls since the Israel-Hamas war began more than two years ago with Hamas’s cross-border attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Abbas’s West Bank-based Palestinian Authority (PA) said the inclusion of the Gaza city Deir al-Balah, which suffered less damage than other areas of the coastal territory during the war, was intended to show that Gaza was an inseparable part of a future Palestinian state.
The elections, in which voter turnout was low, had been held “at a highly sensitive moment amid complex challenges and exceptional circumstances,” Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa said as results were announced on Sunday.
But they represented “an important first step in a broader national process aimed at strengthening democratic life … and ultimately achieving the unity of the homeland,” he said.
Voters in Deir al-Balah told CBC News they hope the elections are just the first in a series of steps that will spur change.
“It has a very important role for us and it has started in the municipality,” Shafika Rabah, 26, said of the elections.
“Hopefully it will grow and we will be able to choose more things than the municipality and the situation will improve for us.”
Mahmoud Al-Bahishi, 52, said they hope the results will lead to “change in the situation were are living in.”
“Every time we support the people, the candidates, who will succeed and succeed, they will help us, God willing, and they will stand with us and fulfill our demands in the city of Deir el-Balah,” said Al-Bahishi.
Boycotts by Hamas, other party
Hamas, which ousted the PA from Gaza in 2007, did not formally nominate candidates in Gaza and boycotted the race in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Fatah’s victory was widely expected.
The leader of another party, the Palestinian National Initiative, told CBC News it also boycotted the vote because they felt there was no real “democratic competition.”
“The Palestinian Authority imposed on candidates that they have to commit to a certain political program … and that alienated many political groups like ours which decided to boycott,” said Mustafa Barghouti.
Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and central Gaza are voting in municipal elections Saturday. It’s the first time since the Israel-Hamas war began in October 2023 that Palestinians in the occupied West Bank will head to the polls, while Gaza’s Deir al-Balah region is hosting the besieged enclave’s first electoral exercise in 20 years.
Despite Hamas’s formal absence from the ballot, some candidates on one of the Deir al-Balah lists were widely seen by residents and analysts as aligned with the movement, making the vote a potential indicator of support for the Islamist group.
Preliminary results showed that the list, known as Deir al-Balah Brings Us Together, won only two of the 15 seats contested in Gaza.
The Nahdat Deir al-Balah list, backed by Abbas’s Fatah party and the Western-backed PA, secured six seats. The remaining seats were won by two other Gaza-based groups, Future of Deir al-Balah and Peace and Building, not affiliated with either faction.
Abbas loyalists swept the election in the West Bank, running unchallenged in many seats.
Fatah spokesperson Abdul Fattah Dawla noted that turnout was close to that for the last municipal elections in the West Bank, in 2022, praising voters for participating despite ongoing violence by Israel.
“By electing figures linked to Fatah, voters appear to be seeking unrestricted international support for municipal governance and a gradual political shift that could extend beyond the local level,” said Palestinian political analyst Reham Ouda.
Low turnout, logistical issues
The recent war has left much of Gaza reduced to rubble, with many residents displaced and focused on survival. Israel has continued conducting strikes despite an October ceasefire.
In Gaza, voter turnout reached just 23 per cent, while in the West Bank it was 56 per cent, according to the chair of the Central Elections Commission, Rami Hamdallah.
An election organizer in Deir al-Balah told CBC News that there were many logistical challenges.
“Israel denied the entry of the basic supplies and materials that we need for the elections — the election boxes, the voting boxes and other materials, the ink and things,” said Amjad Al-Shawwa.
“We managed through the Central Election Commission in order to find local solutions and there was help from certain UN agencies.”
Hamas’s Gaza spokesperson, Hazem Qassem, downplayed the significance of the election results, saying that they had no impact on wider national issues.