Nearly 1.5 million people registered to vote in the occupied West Bank, and 70,000 in the Deir el-Balah area, in the center of the Gaza Strip, are called to the polls on Saturday for a municipal election. Most of the lists are aligned with Fatah, the party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, or without a label. None claim to be from the Islamist movement Hamas.

Published on: 04/25/2026 - 07:43 Modified on: 04/25/2026 - 17:22

This is the first election organized since the start of the war in Gaza. Palestinians in the West Bank and other residents of the small, ravaged enclave began voting on Saturday April 25 to appoint their mayors and municipal councilors, amid disillusionment and limited choices.

Nearly 1.5 million people are registered to vote in the occupied West Bank, and 70,000 in the Deir el-Balah area (central Gaza Strip), the two regions concerned, according to the Central Electoral Commission, based in Ramallah.

When polls opened at 7 a.m. local time (4 a.m. GMT), AFP images filmed in Al-Bireh, in the West Bank, and Deir el-Balah showed electoral agents at polling stations, while few Palestinians showed up.

Most of the electoral lists are aligned with Fatah, the nationalist and secular party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, or without a label.

However, no list claims to belong to Hamas, the Islamist rival of Fatah which controls almost half of the Gaza Strip and whose attack on October 7, 2023 against Israel triggered the war.

Mahmoud Bader, a businessman from Tulkarem, in the northern West Bank, says he will vote, without illusions. “Independent or from a party, the candidates will not change anything in the city,” he told AFP, while Israel has taken control of two neighboring refugee camps for more than a year. “It is the (Israeli) occupation that rules Tulkarem.”

In other major cities, including Nablus and Ramallah, only one list is in the running.

Polling stations will remain open until 7 p.m. local time (4 p.m. GMT) in the West Bank, while in Deir el-Balah they had to close at 5 p.m. to allow counting in daylight, due to the absence of electricity.

First elections in twenty years in Gaza

The UN Deputy Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Ramiz Alakbarov, welcomed the organization of these elections and judged that they “represent an important opportunity for Palestinians to exercise their democratic rights, at a particularly difficult time”.

In the Gaza Strip, controlled by Hamas since 2007, these are the first elections since the 2006 legislative elections which the Islamist movement won.

For political science expert Jamal al-Fadi, from Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the Palestinian Authority is only organizing the election in Deir al-Balah in Gaza "as an experiment (in order to estimate) its success or failure, because there are no polls" since the ceasefire in October 2025.

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It is also one of the rare localities in the territory, devastated by two years of Israeli strikes, where the population has not been massively displaced by the war.

Mahmoud Abbas, 90, has remained in power since his election in early 2005, and his promises to organize presidential and legislative elections have never been followed through on.

Farah Chaath, a resident of Deir al-Balah, said he was happy to vote for the first time at age 25 and said the election "is a confirmation of our continued presence in the Gaza Strip despite everything."

The electoral commission said it had called on "a private security company to secure the voting centers" in Gaza, its spokesperson, Farid Taamallah, told AFP. But a commission source in Gaza, who requested anonymity, claimed that "Hamas police insisted on providing security for the electoral process in Deir al-Balah", speaking of the deployment of "unarmed security personnel in civilian clothes" around voting centers.

With AFP

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