EU ‘ready to deploy’ observers for November Palestinian legislative election, envoy says

• Kaja Kallas says vote offers ‘long-overdue opportunity to renew legitimacy’ of PA institutions, but questions remain as to whether it’ll be held amid Israeli restrictions, divisions in Abbas’s Fatah

The European Union is “ready to deploy” election observers to monitor Palestinian legislative elections set for November, top diplomat Kaja Kallas said Tuesday.

“Palestinians have the right to choose their representatives in elections that are credible, inclusive and transparent,” Kallas posted online after talking to Palestinian Authority vice president Hussein Al-Sheikh.

“After nearly 20 years without a parliamentary vote, these elections would offer a long-overdue opportunity to renew the legitimacy of Palestinian institutions.”

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, 90, has set the legislative polls for November 28. If they take place, it would mark the first such vote in two decades.

Holding elections is part of the reforms demanded by the international community, including the European Union, which supports the Ramallah-based PA financially.

The last legislative elections in the Palestinian territories were held in 2006, when Hamas won and defeated Abbas’s Fatah party, which had previously dominated Palestinian politics.

As a result, the Palestinian Legislative Council, which is the parliament of Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, has not met since 2007. Abbas has said presidential elections will be held next year for the first time since 2005, but a date has not been set.

In April, Palestinians went to the polls to elect municipal council heads in the West Bank, in the first vote since the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023.

The legislative polls face major logistical challenges arising from Israeli measures in the Gaza Strip, as well as in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, which Israel took over in the 1967 Six-Day War.

The EU dispatched an exploratory mission of election observers to the West Bank last month, but the delegation did not travel to the West Bank due to the prevailing security conditions there, an EU official told The Times of Israel.

The approaching Palestinian election has sparked the potential formation of an unlikely alliance between Hamas and former Fatah strongman Mohammad Dahlan.

Dahlan was ousted from the political movement led by Abbas nearly two decades ago, but continues to play an outsized role as a powerful fixer in Palestinian and Gulf politics.

Though the leading Abbas critic would likely remain behind the scenes from his Emirates perch, the formation of an alliance under his Fatah Reformist Democratic Faction could give Hamas and other armed groups that could be banned from the vote an avenue to participate under another name, creating a significant challenge to Abbas’s long-running rule over the PA.

“We have initiated efforts that included Hamas, PIJ, the PFLP and other factions and independent professionals to rally around one national recovery and rebuilding program,” a spokesperson for Dahlan’s faction told The Times of Israel last week.

The spokesman clarified that the alliance has not yet been finalized, and separate talks are underway to reconcile between Dahlan and Abbas in order to boost Fatah’s standing in the upcoming election, a Palestinian official said.

Participants in those talks have also entertained the possibility of postponing the legislative election by several months, the official said.

BY: Jacob Magid