Masar Jadid party list for the Palestinian legislative elections calls to President Mahmoud Abbas
Voices within different circles of the Palestinian leadership are increasingly calling for the legislative elections scheduled for November 28 to be postponed, citing the complexity of the situation and the difficulty of the present circumstances.
Yet millions of Palestinians continue to cling to the glimmer of hope created by the presidential decree calling for the elections to be held on time.
Allow me to be the voice of all those who cannot make themselves heard before you, President Mahmoud Abbas: the young people waiting for an opportunity to help shape their future; the women demanding their rightful place in public life; the people of Gaza seeking an end to war and destruction; and Palestinians in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the diaspora who are weary of division, paralysis, and their inability to influence the decisions affecting their lives.
Since the decision to hold elections was announced, nearly two million Palestinians have responded with renewed hope and registered to participate – close to 90 % of eligible voters.
Opinion polls may indicate that a large Palestinian majority, approaching 80%, disagrees with the policies of the current Palestinian Authority and demands change.
But another reality is equally clear: an overwhelming majority of our people now stand behind you and support your decision to hold the elections on schedule.
This may be the most popular and widely supported decision of your political and national career – not because it guarantees victory for any particular side, but because it returns the decision to the people and gives them the right to choose their representatives, hold them accountable, and renew the legitimacy of their institutions.
Holding elections is neither an administrative procedure nor a ceremonial milestone in the life of a political system. It is a historic event capable of uniting a people torn apart by a long and painful division.
It can restore effectiveness to Palestinian politics and open the doors of our institutions to new blood and to generations long denied the opportunity to participate.
History will record that you made this decision during one of the most difficult and complicated periods in the modern Palestinian experience.
You will be the president who addresses the newly elected Legislative Council at its first session and entrusts a new government emerging from that council with the responsibility of governing: a national unity government of the kind we have lacked for far too long, and a government responsible for rebuilding a devastated Gaza and restoring human dignity to its people as they prepare to endure their third consecutive winter among tents and rubble.
Palestinians need a government that offers them more than slogans: a government that improves their lives, protects their rights, restores the world’s confidence in them, opens the door to financial and political relief, and rebuilds their institutions on the foundations of law, accountability, and popular legitimacy.
You recently succeeded in overseeing local elections and in enabling Fatah to convene its conference and elect its Central Committee. Fatah’s youth movement was also given the opportunity to elect its leadership.
I was one of those young activists when I first met you following your return to Ramallah in the 1990s. Just as those processes were successfully completed, you can protect the most important electoral process of all and ensure that it takes place on time.
Do not repeat the mistake
The senior figures now advising you to postpone the elections because of the circumstances – and working hard to present alternative scenarios and “Plan Bs” – are, in many cases, the same voices that offered you similar advice in 2021.
The elections were postponed then, but none of the promised alternatives materialized.
While the Palestinian “Plan B” amounted to little more than promises and delays, other plans were being formulated elsewhere, beyond our sight. They exploded in all our faces on October 7, 2023, and our people paid a catastrophic price.
The most dangerous course today would be to repeat that mistake: to cancel the political process without providing a credible democratic alternative, and to allow the resulting vacuum to expand until it is filled by extremism, chaos, and violence.
When ballot boxes are closed, the gates of despair are opened. When young people are denied the ability to change their reality through politics, the entire society becomes more vulnerable to the next earthquake.
Perfect conditions for elections do not exist – especially in the Palestinian context. If we make perfect conditions a prerequisite for democracy, elections will never take place.
The challenges involving Gaza, Jerusalem, the internal division and the occupation are real, but they are additional reasons to insist on holding the elections and to work for their success – not justifications for canceling them.
Jerusalem must not become a pretext for obstructing the Palestinian people’s democratic will once again.
We must fight to hold elections there using every political, legal, and diplomatic instrument available to us – and, most importantly, every technological one.
If certain actors within Israel place obstacles in the way, we must confront them with innovative solutions that guarantee the participation of Palestinian Jerusalemites, rather than granting those actors in Israel veto power over Palestinian democratic life as a whole.
I have been among those who criticized and opposed the PA’s policies on many occasions, expressing my views clearly in Palestinian, Arab, and international forums.
Today, however, I stand with the overwhelming majority of the Palestinian people – beside you and behind your decision to hold these elections on time.
This is not a political alignment behind an individual or a party. It is a stand in defense of the Palestinian people’s right to choose, and in support of legitimacy, democracy, and peaceful change.
Your determination to uphold this decision – even if you find yourself standing alone against pressure, calculations, and competing interests – will give millions of Palestinians a new reason to believe that politics can still change their lives.
When you stand before the elected Legislative Council at its first session, you may hear applause unlike any you have heard throughout your long national career.
It will not be the applause of courtesy or protocol. It will come from hearts in which hope has been restored, and from a people who will respect you for returning to them the right to determine their own future.
Mr. President, do not allow anyone to extinguish the glimmer of hope your decision has ignited. Do not surrender our people’s future to those offering excuses and alternative plans that have already been tried and have failed.
Stand firm on November 28, and make it a date with history – not another date postponed.
The writer is a Palestinian political leader from Jerusalem and the founder and head of Masar Jadid (New Path), a new Palestinian party committed to democracy, nonviolence, accountable government, dialogue with Israel, and improving the daily lives of Palestinians. He is a longtime advocate of a negotiated two-state solution and sustained engagement between Palestinians and Israelis.