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Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza's Deir el-Balah area began voting Saturday in municipal elections, the first Palestinian vote since the Gaza war, amid widespread disillusionment and a limited political field.
Nearly 1.5 million people are registered to vote in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, along with 70,000 people in Gaza's Deir el-Balah area, according to the Ramallah-based Central Elections Commission.
Polling stations opened at 7 a.m. local time.
AFP footage from Al-Bireh in the West Bank and Deir el-Balah in Gaza showed election officials at polling stations as Palestinians arrived to cast ballots.
Most electoral lists are aligned with President Mahmud Abbas's secular-nationalist Fatah party or include candidates running as independents.
There are no lists affiliated with Hamas, Fatah's main rival, which controls nearly half of the Gaza Strip.
In most cities, Fatah-backed tickets are running against independent lists led by candidates from factions such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Municipal councils are responsible for basic services including water, sanitation and local infrastructure. They do not enact legislation.
The Palestinian Authority has faced widespread criticism over corruption, stagnation and declining legitimacy.
With no presidential or legislative elections held since 2006, municipal councils have become one of the few functioning democratic institutions under Palestinian Authority administration.
Western and regional donors have increasingly tied financial and diplomatic support to visible reforms, particularly at the local governance level, as national elections remain frozen.
Khalid Eid, 55, said after voting in Al-Bireh that elections should bring change every four years.
"We must see change every four years through elections," he said. "We can't change the situation, but we hope to replace people... people who might be better and help develop the community."
Mahmud Bader, a businessman from the northern West Bank city of Tulkarem, said he would vote despite having little hope for meaningful change.
"Whether candidates are independent or partisan, it has no effect and will have no effect or benefit for the city," he said.
"The occupation is the one that rules Tulkarem. It would only be an image shown to the international media—as if we had elections, a state or independence," he added.
Two adjacent refugee camps in Tulkarem have been under Israeli military control for more than a year.
U.N. coordinator Ramiz Alakbarov commended the election commission for organizing what he called a "credible process."
"Saturday's elections represent an important opportunity for Palestinians to exercise their democratic rights during an exceptionally challenging period," Alakbarov said in a statement before the polls.
Gaza, under Hamas control since 2007, is holding its first vote since the 2006 legislative elections won by the Islamist movement.
The Palestinian Authority is holding elections only in Deir el-Balah "as an experiment" to test its success or failure, since there are no post-war opinion polls, said Jamal al-Fadi, a political scientist at Cairo's Al-Azhar University.
Fadi said Deir el-Balah was chosen because it was one of the only places in Gaza where the population had largely remained in place and not been displaced by more than two years of war between Hamas and Israel.
Two years of war that began in October 2023 have left large parts of Gaza destroyed and more than 72,000 people dead, according to the territory's health ministry, whose figures are considered reliable by the U.N.
Public infrastructure, sanitation services, and the health sector are struggling to function.
The election commission recruited polling staff from civil society organizations and hired "a private security company to secure polling centers" for the Gaza vote, spokesperson Fareed Taamallah said.
Mohammed al-Hasayna, 24, said after voting in Deir el-Balah that the election was largely symbolic but reflected people's "will to live."
"We are an educated people with strong determination, and we deserve to have our own state," he said.
"We want the world to help us overcome the catastrophe of war. Enough wars—it is time to work towards rebuilding Gaza."
Polling stations in the West Bank are set to close at 7:00 p.m.
In Deir el-Balah, polls will close at 5:00 p.m. to allow counting in daylight because of the lack of electricity in the war-devastated strip, the elections commission said.
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