Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday announced that the first presidential and parliamentary elections since 2006 will be held later this year. But the road to the vote – key to advancing Palestinian statehood and mending a rift between Abbas' Fatah party and the Islamic militant group Hamas – is littered with obstacles.
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Parliamentary elections are to be held on May 22, followed by a presidential vote on July 31. The rival factions will meet in Egypt later this month, hoping to work out logistics and settle their differences before election campaigns kick-off, his office said.
The announcement is widely seen as a gesture aimed at pleasing US President-elect Joe Biden, with whom the Palestinians want to reset relations after they reached a low under Donald Trump.
But a December poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found 52% of Palestinians think elections held under present conditions would not be fair and free.
If Hamas won, 76% thought Fatah - the party led by Abbas - would not accept the result and 58% believed Hamas would reject a Fatah victory.
"We have taken an important step but we still have a long way to go," said veteran West Bank political analyst Hani al-Masri. "Great obstacles remain and without overcoming these obstacles the whole operation will be doomed to fail."
Palestinian observers said those hurdles include disagreements within Hamas and Fatah - long the dominant faction in the umbrella Palestine Liberation Organization.
It is unclear what mechanism would be put in place to ensure a free election, whether international observers would take part and whether Abbas, aged 85 and in poor health, would run.
The United States, Israel and the European Union would likely refuse dealings with any Palestinian government that included Hamas, which is designated by the West as a terrorist group.
The European Union welcomed the election announcement.
"The EU stands ready to engage with relevant actors to support the electoral process. The EU also calls on Israeli authorities to facilitate the holding of elections across all the Palestinian territory," the EU's spokesperson for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy said in a statement.
The United Nations also stood ready to support efforts for Palestinians to be able to exercise their democratic rights, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres' spokesman said, adding that it would "be a crucial step towards Palestinian unity."
Israeli officials did not immediately comment and it was unclear whether Israel would permit election activity to take place in east Jerusalem, as it did previously. Palestinians want to hold the elections there, as well as the West Bank and Gaza.
"We have other alternatives, and what is important is that people from Jerusalem can take part in the election," Hanna Nasir, chairman of the Palestinian Central Election Committee, said on Saturday.
The last parliamentary ballot, in 2006, ended in a surprise win by the Hamas terrorist group, in their first-ever national elections, creating a rift with Fatah that degenerated into civil war when Hamas seized control of Gaza the following year.
Gaza is now a Hamas stronghold, while Abbas's power base is in the West Bank.
The two groups have failed to achieve lasting reconciliation, and previous pledges to hold elections went unfulfilled. Rights groups have accused both of suppressing political opposition.
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