The registration of lists will open next Saturday, and the election committee has announced that it is ready to conduct the elections. This has encouraged the European Union to transfer a payment of funds it pledged to finance the costs of the elections. The president and several leaders of Fatah confirm the commitment to hold the elections on time, unless the occupying state disrupts them. However, the specter of postponement looms in the air.
Today, Thursday, the Central Committee of Fatah will meet, and next Saturday the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization will convene. There are two opinions presented:
The first opinion advocates proceeding with the elections on time, arguing that if they do not take place, the occupation should bear the responsibility for their non-holding. Postponing them by a Palestinian decision would cause significant damage to the remaining legitimacy and credibility of the leadership and what remains of Palestinian institutions, especially among Arab and international parties that support holding the elections, particularly Europe. The French Foreign Minister has threatened to halt support for the Authority in the event of a postponement of the elections from the Palestinian side. Therefore, proceeding with the elections is considered a necessary step to restore and renew Palestinian legitimacy, enhance Palestinian representation, and unify the West Bank and Gaza Strip, allowing for the formation of a government that will be recognized by most of the world, while opposed by the United States and Israel, as it would obstruct, and perhaps thwart, the American plan regarding Gaza, which will be under the guardianship of the Peace Council, supposed to implement Trump's plan and Security Council Resolution 2803. Washington, as Jared Kushner informed those concerned, is against Hamas's participation in the elections even indirectly until it relinquishes power and disarms, as the movement agreed in the agreement at the end of last July.
The Netanyahu government will obstruct it, whether Hamas participates directly or indirectly, as it will thwart its efforts to occupy, settle, and displace Gaza through continued genocide, siege, and economic strangulation. It will also lead to the establishment of an elected legitimate council that embodies Palestinian national identity and keeps the path open for the establishment of a Palestinian state, at a time when it has managed, since its formation, to bury the possibility of its establishment.
The second opinion advocates postponing the elections to conduct national dialogue and provide their requirements, fearing a repetition of what happened in 2006, perhaps worse, as the elections will be held under occupation amid division, making them walk in a minefield that could explode at any moment. These elections are for dominance, not participation, where further fragmentation and division are likely to occur, with a split between two centers, one in the West Bank and the other in Gaza, especially if the results do not align with the decree, or if they are significantly tampered with, undermining their legitimacy. There is a need to agree on procedures, laws, and the timing of their conduct, placing them in the context of confronting American-Israeli plans regarding the West Bank and Gaza Strip and various aspects and components of the Palestinian cause, especially the right of return.
Proponents of postponement clash with the fact that the postponement is not until next March as is commonly circulated, but should be until the end of next year, or perhaps longer, until the term of the Peace Council ends according to the Security Council resolution. There are sources close to the Peace Council that indicated that the council will demand that the Authority not hold elections before the transitional phase ends.
If we add to the above that there are reasons and Palestinian parties pushing for postponement, fearing the loss of the official Fatah list amid the congestion of other Fatah lists, they imagined that they could engineer the elections and control their results. Amid news of the formation of a list by Qadura Fares, which is likely to be supported by the popular leader Marwan Barghouti, who has significant popularity and a chance to win the presidential elections, and a list supported by the Reform Stream in Fatah, and Hamas (without direct participation of its leaders and cadres), Islamic Jihad, the National Democratic Gathering, and others, and the Change List that includes the Popular Front, the Initiative, independent national figures, and other dozens of lists representing families, clans, businessmen, and power centers, lowering the electoral threshold to 1% has greatly encouraged participation in the electoral experience, turning it into local elections rather than general ones (especially with the stagnation, aging, and weakening of factions and the threat to lists representing resistance with arrest and assassination), which will lead to the burning of many votes and the formation of a council that drowns in electoral blocs, most of which lack programs and are dominated by defending their regional and private interests. As Voltaire said, when great dreams and projects fall, everyone cares about their own garden.
If, and if opens the work of the devil, the Palestinian leadership and forces had generated new movements and powers at the level of challenges and the historical moment, proceeding with the elections would have been placed in the context of reworking to unify forces and various representatives of different Palestinian gatherings, based on true partnership and preserving plurality on national bases and consensual democracy, and focusing on the interests and concerns of people's daily and living needs, especially in light of the genocide, displacement, annexation, apartheid, settler attacks, and plans to liquidate the Palestinian cause from its roots, and formulating the national project, with the national charter at its core, and forming a unified leadership that works to preserve the unity of the cause, land, people, and historical narrative, and protecting the singular representation of the PLO based on rebuilding its institutions so that it is, in word and deed, the only legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, cutting off the road to guardianship and alternatives, and various plans to liquidate the Palestinian cause, and agreeing on the general political program (and the political programs for each Palestinian gathering) and the appropriate strategies to embody it.
