Loyalists of President Mahmoud Abbas won most races in Palestinian municipal elections, election officials said yesterday, in a vote that for the first time in nearly two decades included a city in the Gaza Strip run by rival Hamas.
Saturday’s ballot marked the first elections of any kind in Gaza since 2006 and the first Palestinian polls since the Gaza war began more than two years ago with Hamas’ cross-border attack on southern Israel.
Abbas’ West Bank-based Palestinian Authority (PA) said the inclusion of the Gaza city Deir Al Balah, which suffered less damage than other areas of the coastal territory during the war, was intended to show that Gaza was an inseparable part of a future Palestinian state.
The elections, in which voter turnout was low, had been held “at a highly sensitive moment amid complex challenges and exceptional circumstances”, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa said as results were announced yesterday.
But they represented “an important first step in a broader national process aimed at strengthening democratic life ... and ultimately achieving the unity of the homeland,” he said.
Hamas, which ousted the PA from Gaza in 2007, did not formally nominate candidates in Gaza and boycotted the race in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Fatah’s victory was widely expected.
But some candidates on one of the Deir Al Balah lists were widely seen by residents and analysts as aligned with the movement, making the vote a potential indicator of support for the group.
Preliminary results showed that the list, known as Deir Al Balah Brings Us Together, won only two of the 15 seats contested in Gaza.
The Nahdat Deir Al Balah list, backed by Abbas’ Fatah party and the Western-backed PA, secured six seats.
The remaining seats were won by two other Gaza-based groups, Future of Deir Al Balah and Peace and Building, not affiliated with either faction.
Abbas loyalists swept the election in the West Bank, running unchallenged in many seats.
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