Abbas loyalists sweep Palestinian elections, including some seats in Gaza

Loyalists of President Mahmoud Abbas won most races in Palestinian municipal elections, election officials said, in a vote that for the first time in nearly two decades included a city in the besieged Gaza Strip.

The elections had been held “at a highly sensitive moment amid complex challenges and exceptional circumstances”, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Mustafa said as results were announced on Sunday.

Saturday’s ballot marked the first elections of any kind in Gaza since 2006, and the first Palestinian polls since Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in the territory began in October 2023.

The vote in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah was a largely symbolic “pilot” election, Palestinian Authority officials said, intended to show that Gaza was an inseparable part of a future Palestinian state.

Hamas, which has governed Gaza since 2007, did not formally nominate candidates in Gaza and boycotted the race in the occupied West Bank, where Fatah’s victory was widely expected.

But some candidates on one of the Deir el-Balah lists were widely seen by residents and analysts as aligned with the movement, making the vote a potential indicator of support for the group.

Preliminary results showed that the list, known as Deir el‑Balah Brings Us Together, won only two of the 15 seats contested in Gaza.

The Nahdat Deir el‑Balah list, backed by Abbas’s Fatah party and the Palestinian Authority, secured six seats. The remaining seats were won by two other Gaza-based groups, Future of Deir el‑Balah and Peace and Building, not affiliated with either faction.

Abbas loyalists, meanwhile, swept the election in the West Bank, running unchallenged in many seats.

Low voter turnout in Gaza

Fatah spokesperson Abdul Fattah Dawla noted that turnout was close to that for the last municipal elections in the West Bank in 2022, praising voters for participating despite ongoing violence by Israel.

In Gaza, voter turnout was 23 percent, while in the occupied West Bank, it was 56 percent, according to Chairman of the Central Elections Commission Rami Hamdallah.

Some ballot boxes and voting equipment, meanwhile, did not make it into the enclave because of Israeli restrictions.

“It’s very obvious how the Israeli forces are still imposing a lot of restrictions on everything that is entering the Gaza Strip,” said Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary, reporting from Gaza City.

Gaza had a low voter turnout, she added, because there is an outdated data registry of the population due to the genocide, while the surviving population is displaced, with people homeless on the streets, “busy with surviving”, she added.