On June 14, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas issued a decree-law amending Decree-Law No. 1 of 2007 on general elections and its subsequent amendments. The move was presented as part of efforts to “enhance political participation and broaden democratic representation.”
According to the Palestinian News Agency WAFA, the decree-law increases the number of seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council to 200, lowers the electoral threshold for winning seats to 1%, and raises the minimum number of candidates on each electoral list from 16 to 20.
While the changes appear on the surface to include positive steps—such as increasing women’s representation and lowering the minimum age for candidacy to encourage youth participation—experts dismissed the initiative as a “farce.”
Cosmetic reforms
Maurice Hirsch, director of the Initiative for Palestinian Authority Accountability and Reform at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, told JNS that the reforms are little more than an attempt to deceive Western audiences.
“The so-called ‘reforms’ announced by the P.A. are nothing other than another attempt to fool the willfully blind Europeans,” Hirsch said. “Over the last three decades, the PLO and Fatah have done everything they can to undermine the establishment of any potential Palestinian democratic tradition.”
Hirsch noted that in the past 32 years, there have been only two elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council and the position of P.A chairman.
Democracy without elections
“Abbas, the self-professed and much-touted reformer, is now in his 22nd year of what was meant to be a four-year term,” he said. “It was Abbas who disbanded the 2006-elected P.A. parliament and has consistently refused to hold new elections.”
According to Hirsch, the problem extends beyond Abbas himself.
“The issue is not Abbas alone, but rather the stranglehold of Fatah and the PLO over the P.A.,” he said. “Even if Abbas were to leave the scene, nothing would change substantively.”
Hirsch also questioned several provisions in the decree.
“The reforms lack a clear explanation for increasing the number of seats in the P.A. parliament from 132 to 200,” he said. “In the run-up to the 2006 elections, Abbas did the same thing, hoping to stack the deck in favor of Fatah. The move failed and Hamas won.”
He also questioned why Abbas, who is nearly 91, postponed presidential elections until 2027.
“Why are those elections not being held immediately, or at least alongside parliamentary elections?” Hirsch asked. “Why waste more funds, which the PA allegedly does not have, on additional elections?”
Addressing provisions aimed at boosting women’s representation, Hirsch argued that they are largely symbolic.
“One of the more creative moves to fool the Europeans is theoretically increasing the representation of women,” he said. “In reality, Palestinian society is governed by Islamic law and traditions. Whether more or fewer women are elected to parliament is irrelevant. Despite European donations totaling more than 1.81 billion euros to improve gender equality, Palestinian society remains male-dominated and misogynistic. That reality will not change simply because more women are elected.”
Hirsch also pointed to what he called a glaring omission from the decree.
“The reforms do not clearly prohibit internationally designated terrorist organizations from participating in elections,” he said, citing Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
The European Union has taken a more positive view of the decree.
An E.U. spokesperson told JNS that the bloc “welcomes President Abbas’s new decree-law amending the general elections law, which represents a good step toward preparations for legislative elections,” and said it looks forward to the announcement of a concrete election date.
The spokesperson added that the E.U. has “consistently supported efforts toward genuine and democratic elections, which are crucial with a view to the Palestinian state-building process.”
The deeper problem
Itamar Marcus, founder and director of Palestinian Media Watch, echoed Hirsch’s criticism, arguing that the focus on procedural reforms distracts from more fundamental problems.
“The great farce about so-called Palestinian Authority reform is that the P.A., followed by many European countries, is completely focused on administrative changes,” Marcus said. “They talk about transparency, democracy and better administration, as if this will make the P.A. worthy of statehood.”
“The problems with the P.A. are 2% administrative and 98% related to the essence of its ideology and identity,” he added.
Marcus said the P.A. continues to promote antisemitism and glorify terrorism.
“The P.A. promotes odious antisemitism, presents terrorist murderers as the most honored people in Palestinian society, names schools after child killers and holds school assemblies celebrating Oct. 7,” he said.
He also noted that religious officials on official P.A. television have repeatedly prayed for the extermination of Jews.
“All of this antisemitism, hate and terror promotion are fundamental parts of the world the P.A. has intentionally created,” Marcus said.
He pointed to polling showing broad Palestinian support for Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
“Eighty-two percent of Palestinians said the Oct. 7 Hamas attack was the correct decision—not because of a lack of transparency, but because the P.A. has convinced people that there is no greater glory than murdering Israelis and Jews,” he said.
“The P.A. can promise the most democratic structures in the world, and it’s all intended as a distraction so the world won’t demand the serious changes that it refuses even to begin implementing.”
By presenting limited procedural changes as meaningful democratic reform while leaving untouched issues of incitement, terrorism and governance, Abbas’s latest decree appears, critics say, aimed more at reassuring Western donors than transforming the Palestinian political system.
According to Marcus, “the Palestinian Authority is a terrorist organization in everything but name.”
