The wooden ballot boxes were a last resort. Israel blocked the entry of standard voting materials into Gaza — ballot paper, proper boxes, ink — so the Palestinian Central Election Commission repurposed what it could find: ink from a vaccination campaign, handmade wooden containers. In Deir al-Balah, a city in central Gaza spared an Israeli ground invasion but not the surrounding devastation, 70,000 people were eligible to vote Saturday in the territory’s first election in nearly two decades.

Twenty-three percent showed up.

The result, announced Sunday, was a sweep for loyalists of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. His Fatah party and its allies dominated local council races across the Israeli-occupied West Bank and won the largest bloc of seats in Deir al-Balah. The Palestinian Authority celebrated the vote as a step toward democratic renewal. The numbers — and the conditions under which they were produced — tell a different story.

A Vote Amid Rubble

Saturday’s municipal elections were the first of any kind in Gaza since 2006, when Hamas won parliamentary elections and, a year later, violently seized control of the territory from the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority. More than two years of war since October 2023 have reduced much of Gaza to rubble. A ceasefire took effect in October 2025, though Israeli strikes have continued.

The Deir al-Balah vote was explicitly a pilot — a symbolic effort to demonstrate that Gaza remains part of a future Palestinian state. Rami Hamdallah, who chairs the Central Election Commission and is a former prime minister, called holding elections there at all “a significant achievement.”

The challenges were immense. Gaza’s civil registry is outdated. The surviving population is displaced. Voters are, as Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary reported from Gaza City, “busy with surviving.” Israel’s COGAT, the military body overseeing humanitarian affairs in Gaza, did not respond to questions about blocking election materials.

Uncontested and Unopposed

In the West Bank, turnout was roughly 53 percent — comparable to previous municipal elections — but the democratic picture was no less telling.

Candidates were required to accept the program of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which calls for recognizing Israel and renouncing armed struggle — effectively excluding Hamas and other factions. In major cities including Ramallah and Nablus, only one list of candidates was submitted, meaning those races were decided without a vote. Across the territory, 197 local councils were filled by consensus, requiring no ballot at all.

“Everyone is aware of the political, security and economic conditions,” Hamdallah told journalists. He called the vote a reflection of national unity and expressed hope that presidential and legislative elections would follow.

Those have not been held since 2006. Abbas, 90, was elected in 2005 to what was supposed to be a four-year term.

The Legitimacy Question

Fatah claimed a “sweeping victory,” winning the majority of contested councils — including in Jenin, a northern West Bank city where the Palestinian Authority was previously accused of losing control to armed factions. In Deir al-Balah, the Fatah-backed Nahdat list secured six of 15 seats. A list widely seen as aligned with Hamas, Deir al-Balah Brings Us Together, won two. The remaining seats went to two unaffiliated local groups.

Hamas did not field candidates in Gaza and boycotted the West Bank vote. But spokesman Hazem Qassem called the municipal elections “a positive and important step” and urged that they be expanded across Gaza — followed by presidential and legislative elections.

The question those elections would face is the same one hanging over Saturday’s vote: what does democratic legitimacy mean when the institutions democracy is meant to govern have been hollowed out or destroyed?

President Donald Trump’s 20-point ceasefire plan for Gaza established an international Board of Peace and a committee of unelected Palestinian technocrats — explicitly excluding both Fatah and Hamas from governing the territory. Progress on disarmament and reconstruction has stalled. The Palestinian Authority has been frozen out of US-led postwar planning.

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa called Saturday’s vote “another step on the path to full independence.” Israel under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opposes a Palestinian state.

What Elections Cannot Deliver

Ashraf Abu Dan, a voter in Deir al-Balah, framed his participation plainly. “I came to vote because I have a right to elect members to municipal council so they can provide us with services,” he told the Associated Press. In the West Bank city of Beitunia, Khalid al-Qawasmeh said municipal laws needed enforcement “so people feel there’s justice.”

The councils elected Saturday oversee basic services — water, roads, electricity — in territories where infrastructure is either under chronic strain or physically destroyed. In Qalqilya, where no slates registered at all, Marwan Ennabi was blunt: “This isn’t transparency. This is chaos, chaos, chaos.”

The Palestinian Authority has promised that 2026 will be the “year of Palestinian democracy.” Whether elections held under these conditions strengthen that claim or underline its limits depends less on who won than on whether the winners can govern anything at all.

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