Palestinian officials hail local elections in a Gaza community and the West Bank

A Palestinian man votes in local elections, the first in two decades in Gaza and the first in the occupied West Bank since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in Al-Ubaidiya, West Bank, Saturday, April 25, 2026. Mahmoud Illean/AP hide caption toggle caption Mahmoud Illean/AP JERUSALEM — Palestinian authorities said Sunday that local elections in a single Gaza community and the Israeli-occupied West Bank were a success and called them a step toward a long-delayed presidential election in the territories and eventual statehood. The Palestinian Authority, which administers semiautonomous areas of the West Bank but is left out of the U.S.-drafted ceasefire plan for Gaza, has described Saturday's local election in central Gaza's Deir al-Balah as a largely symbolic pilot while the authority seeks to politically link the territories. It was the first election in part of Hamas-run Gaza in more than two decades. Deir al-Balah, like much of the territory, is devastated by two years of war but was spared an Israeli ground invasion. Turnout there was 23%, but officials cited challenges including large-scale displacement and outdated civil registry records. Hamas, which controls the half of Gaza that Israel withdrew from last year under the current ceasefire, did not field candidates and did not try to block the vote. Turnout in the West Bank elections was 56%, or over a half-million people, not dramatically different from elections there in recent years. …