Abbas Announces Palestinian Elections After Years of Paralysis - The New York Times

The decree by President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority was viewed by analysts as a bid to lift his standing with the Biden administration.

JERUSALEM — Sixteen years after he was elected for what was meant to be a four-year term, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority announced on Friday that presidential and parliamentary elections would be held in the spring and summer.

Abbas, 85, the leader of Fatah, the mainstream Palestinian party, was last elected to office in early 2005 after the death of his predecessor, Yasir Arafat.

Abbas and confining his authority to parts of the occupied West Bank.

Abbas responded by forming an emergency government based in the West Bank, but Hamas officials refused to recognize it.

Abbas announced that elections would be held in September of that year, but Hamas rejected the idea and they were called off.

Abbas was interested in ultimately allowing the elections to go ahead, and the two rival Palestinian factions have not explained publicly how they will hold elections while the West Bank and Gaza are ruled by the separate groups.

Abbas has previously said would prevent elections from going forward.

Azzam al-Ahmad, a member of the Fatah Central Committee, said Palestinian officials would ask Israel to refrain from “placing impediments” on the Palestinians voting in East Jerusalem, but added that he expected the Israelis would do so regardless.

Both Hamas and Fatah are convinced that they need to hold to elections, said Ghassan Khatib, a political scientist at Birzeit University in the West Bank, but it was unclear what kind of an election it would be.