Palestine Center Brief No. 347 (February 9, 2021)
By Dalal Yassine
“Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas’s recent announcement of elections later this year has raised significant questions about his intentions. In late May, elections for the Palestinian legislative council (PLC) will be held. Two months later, Palestinians will vote in presidential elections. Finally, elections are planned for the Palestinian National Council (PNC) in late August. These are the first PLC elections held in fifteen years and the first time since Abbas was elected in 2005 that there will be a contested election for the presidency. Further complicating matters, open elections for the PNC have never been held before and it is uncertain how they will be conducted.
The first elections for the PLC and the President of the PA were held in 1996, three years after the initial Oslo Accords were signed. Although Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem voted with some interference from Israel, Palestinians refugees in neighboring Arab states and those in the diaspora were not allowed to participate. Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, won the presidential election handily and his Fatah party dominated the PLC. But new presidential elections were not held until after Arafat’s death in 2004.
Abbas was elected President to a four-year term, but he has served for 15 years. Even though the Palestinian Basic Law places term limits on the Presidency, this was ignored by Abbas and the international community. Instead, Abbas strengthened his extra-judicial powers and control over the Fatah movement while weakening Palestinian institutions and governance.”
Dalal Yassine is a Non-Resident Fellow at The Jerusalem Fund and Palestine Center. The views in this brief are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Jerusalem Fund.
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