Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has called elections for November 1, 2026, marking the first election by direct universal suffrage of the members of the Palestinian National Council, or in other words, the parliament of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported on Monday.
Abbas, who is president of both the Palestinian Authority and the PLO, issued a decree stipulating that the “elections will be held wherever possible, both inside and outside Palestine, in order to ensure the widest possible participation of the Palestinian people,” reported Wafa.
To date, members of the Palestinian National Council have never been elected but were appointed or elected indirectly.
The Palestinian National Council, which for a long time functioned as the PLO’s parliament in exile, is dominated by Fatah, the movement of Mahmoud Abbas, which he founded together with Yasser Arafat, the historic Palestinian leader who died in 2004. The Palestinian Islamist movements Hamas and Islamic Jihad are not members of the PLO and are not represented in it.
Sources: WAFA, CNA