Palestinian Elections Under Israeli Occupation Would be Ill-Advised

posted on: Sep 2, 2026

By: Ghassan Rubeiz / Arab America Contributing Writer

Elections under occupation are like surgery in an unsterile environment: high-risk by design. Palestine’s occupation keeps its people unrepresented, divided, poorly led, with mixed opinions about launching unsymmetrical wars and fighting each other more than their occupier — underwritten by a Washington where the pro-Israel lobby is very strong.

Amid a regional war whose consequences remain immense, with Palestine again at its center, comes a surprise: talk of an election for the Palestinians. Last July, President of the Palestinian Authority (PA) Mahmoud Abbas set November 28 as the date for the first Palestinian legislative election since 2006. For many Palestinians, the announcement did not signal democratic renewal. It reopened a wound.

The 2006 election produced a clear result: Hamas won, and Fatah, the establishment party, lost. The Fatah-dominated PA, Israel and the US administration under George W. Bush rejected the outcome — a rupture, not a peaceful transfer of power. Hamas retreated to govern Gaza; Israel sealed the territory into an open-air prison for its inhabitants of over two million people. Rather than defend political pluralism, the PA cracked down on Hamas-leaning Palestinians and armed resisters alike, and security coordination with Israel became its defining function, serving Israel’s needs over its own people’s. The election fractured Palestinian politics rather than strengthening it, leaving two governments, the PA in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza, neither capable of delivering liberation or unity. Palestinian corruption and disunity have given Israel a ready pretext to call Palestinians unfit for democratic rule — the context for Abbas’s new election call.

Polling by Khalil Shikaki, the notable director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, shows Palestinians have moved past the old political architecture. Hamas’s support has collapsed, especially in the West Bank, now at 24 percent, exactly matched by Fatah’s poor rating. A plurality, 44 percent, believe that neither Fatah nor Hamas deserves to lead a government. The largest bloc is the politically alienated, those who reject the whole political system existing since the Oslo Accords of 1993.  Shikaki’s most significant finding is that Marwan Barghouti — the Fatah leader Israel imprisoned over his role in the second intifada (September 2000 – February 2005), and whom Palestinians regard as a political prisoner rather than a convict — is the only figure with support across factions: 54 percent in a hypothetical presidential race, more than double his nearest rival. His legitimacy is not partisan; it is national. Israel fears him precisely because he could become a Palestinian Mandela — convicted and imprisoned in the same way, and a credible negotiator — a prospect that gives hope to Palestinians and to any Israeli who still believes in diplomacy.

Reporting by Mondo Weiss’s Qassam Muaddi shows why Abbas’s call is unlikely to deliver renewal: Israel controls movement, political space, and civic life, and has jailed more than 10,000 Palestinians since October 2023, roughly double the prior total. The PA cannot administer a credible vote under these constraints, nor can any emerging coalition organize freely enough to compete. An election under such conditions would not promote democracy.  It is theatrics staged under coercion, and could serve the occupier rather than the occupied.

If Palestinians now cannot choose their leaders at home, they can still act abroad. The Palestinian-diaspora — from the US and UK to Chile, Europe, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Egypt and other countries — is the only arena where Palestinians can organize freely, build a political program, and form coalitions with civil rights groups, unions, churches, mosques and Jewish allies who reject occupation and inequality. This is so different from the 2006 diaspora: eighty percent of Democratic voters in the US now view Israel unfavorably, AIPAC-favored candidates are losing primaries despite the tens of millions it spent in their support, and the US-Israel alliance is already fraying over Gaza, Iran and Lebanon. That shifted ground, not the ballot box, deserves the diaspora’s energy — starting with the leadership Palestinians already trust.

That leadership has a name: Marwan Barghouti. His imprisonment is not only a travesty of justice; it is a political barrier to Palestinian renewal. Diaspora advocacy should put his freedom at the center of its agenda. He carries secular legitimacy, cross-party respect, and moral authority recognized among both homeland and overseas Palestinians — the only figure capable of representing all Palestinians while their homeland is politically immobilized. Freeing him is not the endpoint though, but it is what would let Palestinians choose, for the first time in two decades, their own answer to the question occupation has always answered for them: what comes next.

What Palestinians demand need not be a detailed peace plan — it can be a single principle: freedom. If that requires, for a period, one democratic state granting Palestinians of the territories and East Jerusalem a path to citizenship, as Palestinian citizens of Israel already hold, that is a legitimate horizon. Such a state would not end Palestinian identity; it would begin political equality, and over a generation could evolve into a binational system recognizing both peoples, protecting collective rights, and replacing domination with shared governance.

Ghassan Rubeiz is the former Middle East Secretary of the World Council of Churches. Earlier, he taught psychology and social work in his country of birth, Lebanon, and later in the United States, where he currently lives. He has contributed to political commentary for the past twenty years and has delivered occasional public talks on peace, justice, and interfaith topics. You can reach him at rubeizg@gmail.com

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Arab America. The reproduction of this article is permissible with proper credit to Arab America and the author.

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