Hamas intends to run in upcoming Palestinian Authority (PA) legislative elections as part of the widest possible unified coalition, a senior official in the terror organization’s political bureau stated Wednesday.
Speaking in an interview with Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV, Hussam Badran asserted that the terror group – along with most Arab factions in the PA – rejects imposing “political conditions or requiring participants to adopt a specific political program”.
Badran claimed that the PA’s Central Elections Commission and judicial bodies are functioning “to ensure Palestinians can freely choose their political program”.
Framing the upcoming vote as a pivotal turning point, Badran described the elections as a “historic opportunity” to alter the political status quo and “end two decades of unilateral decision-making on national affairs” by PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s ruling Fatah faction.
He argued that elections were severely overdue, accusing Ramallah leadership of setting dates and guidelines unilaterally rather than through detailed factional consensus, as he claimed occurred prior to the 2006 and 2021 election cycles.
Badran maintained that local residents hold “an inherent right” to select their leadership, whether through parliamentary elections within the PA or through voting for the Palestinian National Council – which he termed the “broader representative body for Palestinians”.
In July, Abbas signed a decree scheduling parliamentary elections for November 28, 2026, to be followed by the convening of the National Council and presidential elections in 2027.
Abbas, 90, originally secured the PA chairmanship in 2005 under a four-year mandate that technically expired in 2009.
The Palestinian Legislative Council has remained completely non-functional since 2007, following Hamas’s violent military coup in the Gaza Strip that fractured the PA. Abbas officially dissolved the parliament in 2018. The last PA legislative elections took place in 2006.
Since the 2007 schism, the political structure has remained split: Hamas has maintained administrative and military control over Gaza while the Fatah-dominated PA retains civilian administration in Judea and Samaria.
General elections in the PA were scheduled for 2021, but Abbas officially announced that they would be postponed, likely due to fears that he would once again lose to Hamas.
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