Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announced on Monday that the Parliament of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, also known as the Palestinian National Council, would hold elections on November 1.
While elections have been called before, they have been repeatedly canceled.
The upcoming election will be the first where council members are elected by vote as opposed to being appointed.
“Elections will be held wherever possible, both inside and outside Palestine, to ensure the broadest possible participation of the Palestinian people wherever they reside,” Abbas said, though it is unclear how the votes abroad will take place.
Despite the decree, the Palestinian National Council has not seen a session convened by Abbas since 2018 and is considered a less powerful institution than the PLO Executive Committee.
Abbas also issued a decision setting the date for the Eighth General Conference of Fatah in Ramallah for May 14, 2026, and the Cabinet had earlier announced the date for local elections in the West Bank for April 25, 2026. Abbas signed a decree banning Hamas from the municipal elections last week.
Abbas fixes November date for Palestinian National Council elections
The ban came only shortly after the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research published research that found that Fatah’s voter base nearly halved from 23% to 14% in the West Bank, based on a survey carried out in October 2025.
Abbas’s popularity as president, the poll found, also fell behind that of the hypothetical presidency of imprisoned Fatah terrorist Marwan Barghouti.
The majority (76%) of the West Bank Palestinians also said they did not trust the PA.