Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has once again postponed elections, blaming Israel and the security situation for delaying a vote that would have been the first in two decades.
Abbas announced on Saturday that parliamentary elections scheduled for November 28 would be pushed back to September 11, 2027, when a presidential vote will also be held.
The move “comes amid continued Israeli military attacks, settlement expansion, settler violence and repeated Israeli incursions across the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem”, the PA said.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar rejected the accusations as “yet another ridiculous lie designed to evade responsibility and accountability”.
“Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian corrupt dictator, who has not held elections in over twenty years, has once again deceived the international community,” Sa’ar wrote on X.
Abbas, who turns 91 next month, was elected president in January 2005 for a four-year term, which expired in 2009. He has remained in power ever since, ruling largely by decree.
The last parliamentary elections, held in 2006, were won by Hamas, which subsequently seized control of Gaza from Abbas’s Fatah movement in a violent takeover in 2007.
Abbas has repeatedly promised fresh elections, only to postpone or cancel them, frequently citing Israeli restrictions, particularly on voting in East Jerusalem.
The latest delay comes amid longstanding pressure from the UK and EU for the PA to undertake democratic and institutional reforms.
These include holding credible elections, tackling corruption and addressing incitement and the payments to imprisoned terrorists and the families of Palestinians killed while carrying out attacks.
Earlier this week, the EU's foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, called the planned November elections a “long-overdue opportunity to renew the legitimacy of Palestinian institutions”. Last month, Britain's UN ambassador, Dame Sarah MacIntosh, told the UN Security Council that the planned elections were “an important step”, insisting they must be “free, fair, and inclusive”.
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