Palestine holds local elections that exclude Hamas and return ballot boxes to Gaza for the first time in 20 years
This Sunday’s Palestinian local elections are proceeding without incident. Its importance goes beyond its geographical scope: it is the first time in 20 years that they have been held in Gaza. Even if it is symbolic: only for the more than 70,000 registered in Deir El Balah, the least destroyed town in the Strip, where more than two million people live. The Palestinians have built the wooden ballot boxes and printed the ballots, given Israel’s refusal to allow them to receive the material from the West Bank.
In the West Bank these are the fifth local elections, but they are only held in 48 of the 90 cities. In the rest, the representatives will be elected by acclamation because they were the only list. There are, therefore, no ballot boxes in cities as important as Ramallah, where the institutions are located, or Nablus.
A decree by Mahmoud Abbas, the increasingly authoritarian and discredited Palestinian president, forces candidates to commit to the principles of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which implies recognition of Israel. The US and the EU have been demanding democratic reforms, but also isolating Hamas, the Islamist party that won the last legislative elections, in 2006. For this reason, neither Hamas nor other factions, such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, participate in the process. About 90% of the candidates are theoretically independent, although generally close to Fatah, Abbas’ president’s party. The rest belongs to Al Fatah.
In a press conference at the headquarters of the Central Electoral Commission, in Al Bireh, next to the city of Ramallah, the president of the Commission, Rami Hamdala, explained that participation was around 15% at 11:30 local time (10:30 in mainland Spain). The goal is to reach 50%, three points above the average of previous municipal elections.
